![]() He is one of the supreme living virtuosos, not only of percussion but of any instrument.Īt the heart of the 2015 festival, which unfolded from June 10th to June 14th, was a solo program by Schick, and its centerpiece was “Zyklus”-a magisterially ambiguous creation that combines precisely notated sections with more open-ended passages that leave considerable choice to the performer. ![]() Schick finds force and feeling in the allegedly cerebral world of the European avant-garde at the same time, he brings rigor and focus to the American experimental and minimalist traditions. That he is committed to modern fare is a given as he likes to say, he is older than his repertory, having been born in 1954, five years before Stockhausen wrote “Zyklus,” which is considered the first major work for solo percussion. Schick, who teaches at the University of California, San Diego, and also leads the La Jolla Symphony and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, is not as well known as the others, but in the contiguous worlds of percussion and new music he possesses quasi-legendary status. Dawn Upshaw, Leif Ove Andsnes, Mark Morris, and Jeremy Denk have participated in recent seasons, and Peter Sellars will unleash his enthusiasms in 2016. Ojai appoints a different music director each year. What is different about Ojai? It has to do, I think, simply with the power of consistency: the festival stuck to its mission, year after year, decade after decade, until, at some point, its ideal audience became the real one. Conversely, after the clarinettist Joshua Rubin sailed through Boulez’s coolly spastic “Dialogue de l’Ombre Double,” a woman behind me exclaimed, “Now, that’s real music!” She employed the tone of relief that one hears at Lincoln Center when Boulez gives way to Brahms. Works are sometimes criticized for being too accessible such was a not uncommon reaction to a piece performed at this year’s festival, Michael Harrison’s “Just Ancient Loops,” in which the cellist Maya Beiser spun out soothingly euphonious lines. To attend Ojai is to enter a happily topsy-turvy world where longtime patrons are as avid for new music as they are for classic repertory. And the mighty exodus of composers from Nazi-occupied Europe to Los Angeles, led by Schoenberg and Stravinsky, prepared the conditions in which the festival flowered. The lineage of experimental composers who grew up on the West Coast or were based there for part of their careers-Henry Cowell, Harry Partch, John Cage, Lou Harrison, La Monte Young, James Tenney, and Pauline Oliveros, among others-is central to contemporary music history. The esoteric sects that proliferated in the state at the turn of the last century had myriad connections to modernism in the arts. On second thought, no one should be surprised that such an institution took root in Southern California. (Most events in the festival take place at the Libbey Bowl, in the town park.) At the most recent edition, under the aegis of the percussionist and conductor Steven Schick, there were shrieks of flute and clatterings of gong two works involving stones that were knocked together austere chamber programs of Bartók and Boulez a concussive hour of Varèse a recitation of Kurt Schwitters’s Dada poem “Ursonate” and a rendition of Morton Feldman’s five-hour trio, “For Philip Guston,” which began at 5 a.m. In 1999, when I first visited, a gang of Finns banged on discarded auto parts that were dangling from Ojai’s ancient trees. The jazz great Eric Dolphy once played Varèse’s “Density 21.5” Mauricio Kagel led his “Anagrama,” for speaking, spluttering chorus. Stravinsky and Copland have presided over performances of their own works, and Pierre Boulez has served as music director on seven occasions. ![]() More recently, the town has attracted a smattering of Hollywood celebrities, who seem to pass through its streets unmolested.Īmid the self-discovery talks, spa treatments, and rounds of golf, the Ojai Music Festival has been raising a finely calibrated ruckus each spring since 1947. In the nineteen-twenties, the Indian guru Jiddu Krishnamurti and various personalities connected with the Theosophical movement took up residence in Ojai. ![]() Its crisp air, sycamore groves, and mountain views have long attracted millionaires, spiritual seekers, and bohemians. Tucked away in a lush valley at the edge of Los Padres National Forest, sixty-five miles northwest of Los Angeles, Ojai is not the sort of place where one would expect to find an aesthetic of musical experiment. “At first glance, it is a mystery how the prosperously rustic town of Ojai, California, came to host one of the world’s great festivals of modern music. Originally published July 6, 2015 full text and original article visible here.
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