2025 OJAI MUSIC FESTIVAL - SATURDAY

“The Ojai Music Festival has been raising a finely calibrated ruckus each spring since 1947.”
– Alex Ross, The New Yorker

I have been attending the Ojai Festival since 2009, and it's always a highlight of every year. Come on out for the 4 days, for one day, or one concert. I suggest you look for lodging ASAP, as it will become scarce and expensive the closer you get to the date.

Date: Saturday, June 7, 2025 all day!

Venue: Libbey Bowl, Libbey Park
210 S. Signal St. Ojai, CA 93023
and other venues TBA

TIckets: https://www.ojaifestival.org/buy%20tickets/
I am getting the lawn tickets for the entire festival

Note: I am not leading any "event". I will be there for the entire festival. If you attend any of the events, send me a message via Meetup and let's get together. I sit on the lawn behind the seating section.

Saturday Highlights:
MORNING MEDITATION 8:00 AM | Ojai Meadows Preserve
Claire Chase and Michael Matsuno, flute | M.A. Tiesenga, saxophone| Joshua Rubin, clarinet | Susie Ibarra, percussion
Susie IBARRA Sunbird (West Coast premiere)
Susie IBARRA Kolubrí
Pauline OLIVEROS Horse Sings From Cloud
Free and open to the public

CHAMBERS 10:30AM | Libbey Bowl
Claire Chase, flute | Katinka Kleijn, Seth Parker Woods, cello | Cory Smythe, piano | JACK Quartet
Marcos BALTER Chambers
Leilehua LANZILOTTI ahupua’a
Anna THORVALDSDOTTIR Ubique (West Coast premiere)

A program centered on the West Coast premiere of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Ubique for flute, two cellos, piano and electronics, a work of enigmatic lyricism by a composer who is inspired by the “musical qualities of nature.”

OJAI FILMS 1:00PM | Ojai Playhouse
Deep Listening: The Story of Pauline Oliveros Film by Daniel Weintraub
Get tickets here >>

HOUSATONIC 1:00PM | Move Sanctuary, 306 E Matilija Street
Annea LOCKWOOD Housatonic Sound installation
Ticketing information to be announced

OJAI AFTERNOONS 3:30PM | Greenberg Center, Ojai Valley School
Claire Chase, flute | Joshua Rubin, clarinet | Craig Taborn, piano | Susie Ibarra, percussion | Levy Lorenzo, electronics
Craig TABORN Busy Griefs and Endangered Charms
A concert centered on the West Coast premiere of Busy Griefs and Endangered Charms for flute, clarinet, cello, piano and electronics by the endlessly inventive composer-pianist Craig Taborn. The work is inspired by a dream in which plants awake, blossom, grow and change as the dreamer walks through a garden.

HOW FORESTS THINK 8:00PM | Libbey Bowl
Wu Wei, sheng | Kathryn Schulmeister, bass | Joshua Rubin, clarinet | Claire Chase, flute | Alex Peh, piano | JACK Quartet | Festival Artists | Steven Schick, conductor
JS BACH Chorale Prelude, Vor deinen Thron, BWV 668
Sofia GUBAIDULINA Meditation on the Bach chorale Vor deinen Thron, BWV 668
Tania LEÓN Hechizos
Liza LIM How Forests Think
Music by Bach, Sofia Gubaidulina (inspired by Bach) and Tania León, precede the West Coast premiere of the large-scale How Forests Think by Liza Lim, a work inspired by the imagery of ancient forests as vibrant, symbiotic communities that, as the composer writes, “that nourish the old connections and keep a song going. One might think of a forest as a choir or certainly as an ensemble. Stories, dreams, and thoughts inhabit multiple forms in a living matrix.

OJAI LATE NIGHT 10:30PM | Ojai Playhouse
Liza Lim | Steven Schick | Leilehua Lanzilotti; speaker TBA | Annea Lockwood, sound diffusion
Annea LOCKWOOD Spirit Catchers
Get tickets here >>>

For the 79th Festival flutist Claire Chase is Music Director in 2025:
“When Ara called me with the invitation, I nearly dropped the phone! The Ojai Festival has been a kind of dreamland for me since I was a kid growing up in Southern California, and I have the deepest affection for the audiences at Ojai – I don’t know that a more curious, adventurous, and open-eared group of listeners exists anywhere in the world. I’m tremendously excited to work with Ara to craft experiences that I hope will animate, complicate, and celebrate the connections between musics of the past and the beating-heart present,” shares Claire Chase.

Previously, Chase performed at the Ojai Music Festival with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in 2015 with that year’s Music Director Steven Schick, in 2016 with Music Director Peter Sellars, and in 2017 with Music Director Vijay Iyer.

Claire Chase, described by The New York Times recently as “the North Star of her instrument’s ever-expanding universe,” is a musician, interdisciplinary artist, and educator. Passionately dedicated to the creation of new ecosystems for the music of our time, Chase has given the world premieres of hundreds of new works by a new generation of artists, and in 2013 launched the 24-year commissioning project Density 2036. Now in its eleventh year, Density 2036 reimagines the solo flute literature over a quarter-century through commissions, performances, recordings, education, and an accessible archive at density2036.org. For complete biographical information on Claire Chase, visit [OjaiFestival.org](https://www.ojaifestival.org/claire-chase-music-director/).

Festival History: https://www.ojaifestival.org
For seven decades, the Ojai Music Festival has been a laboratory for the special chemistry that results from combining insatiable curiosity with unbounded creativity. The formula is simple: Each year a music director is given the freedom and resources to imagine four days of musical brainstorming. Some have approached their task with caution, fearing that Ojai might be like other places. But, of course, it’s not. More often this unique blend of enchanted setting and an audience voracious in its appetite for challenge and discovery has inspired a distinguished series of conductors, performers, composers to push at boundaries and stretch limits.