Professor Peter Sellars to Direct the Ojai Music Festival
The Ojai Music Festival is an annual event with a new appointed Music Director for each year. The Music Director is given the opportunity to organize a four day festival based on his or her own design. This year, renowned theater director and World Arts and Cultures/Dance professor, Peter Sellars, has been tapped to orchestrate the event.
The Ojai Music Festival in California has an unusual model. It hands the reins to a new music director each year. For 2016 the task has fallen to Peter Sellars, the opera and theater director, who announced Wednesday that the 70th festival this June would include works by Kaija Saariaho, Caroline Shaw and Tania León, among others.
The festival, which will be held from June 9 to 12, will feature the American premieres of the chamber version of “La Passion de Simone” and “Only the Sound Remains,” by Ms. Saariaho, a Finnish composer. Mr. Sellars will stage “Only the Sound Remains,” her setting of a sequence of adaptations of two Japanese Noh plays in versions by Ezra Pound, in an outdoor amphitheater.
Julia Bullock will be featured in the world premiere of “Josephine Baker: A Personal Portrait,” by Tyshawn Sorey. Dina El Wedidi, an Egyptian singer, and Aruna Sairam, an Indian Carnatic singer, will make their Ojai debuts. And, for the first time, the festival will present free events for families, including the new work by Ms. León — which will be performed by the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles and the International Contemporary Ensemble.— Michael Cooper, Dec. 10
Read the full article at the New York Times website.