Colburn Orchestra to Make Ojai Festival Debut Under Esa-Pekka Salonen
Colburn alumna Leila Josefowicz joins the ensemble as Geneva Lewis gives a U.S. premiere at the Ojai Valley.
Colburn School will take center stage at this year’s landmark 80th Ojai Music Festival, with performances spanning the festival’s programming. In its Ojai Festival debut, the Colburn Orchestra will perform twice, including the festival’s finale under the baton of Festival Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, who leads the Negaunee Conducting Program and holds the Maestro Ernst H. Katz Chair of Conducting Studies at Colburn. This performance will also feature Colburn alumna Geneva Lewis and Leila Josefowicz. Salonen Fellows Mert Yalniz and Aleksandra Melaniuk share the podium with Salonen in Saturday night’s concert featuring the LA Phil New Music Group alongside Lewis, who appears in five events throughout the festival, including the opening-night U.S. premiere of Salonen’s new work for violin and cello. LA Dance Project will also give the world premiere of a festival-commissioned work choreographed by Janie Taylor, Artistic Director of Colburn’s Trudl Zipper Dance Institute. Together, these performances showcase Colburn’s far-reaching impact across music, dance, and the broader artistic landscape.
On Friday, June 12, Salonen leads the Colburn Orchestra in Steven Stucky’s Colburn Variations, a work honoring the students, faculty, and staff of Colburn, as well as its founder, Richard D. Colburn. The program continues with Salonen’s kinēma, a lyrical, cinematic work, featuring clarinetist Anthony McGill. Witold Lutosławski’s Grave, (Metamorphoses for cello and strings) featuring cellist Jay Campbell follows, and the concert concludes with Schoenberg’s first large-scale work and one of his most popular, Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night).
For the Festival’s finale concert on Sunday, June 14, the Colburn Orchestra is joined by an array of celebrated guest artists: violinists and Colburn alumna Geneva Lewis and Leila Josefowicz, soprano Bridget Esler, tenor Eric Finbarr Carey, and baritone Abdiel González. J.S. Bach’s Prelude from Partita No. 3 in E major for violin, BWV 1006 opens the concert, followed by Salonen’s FOG, a dreamlike fantasy around the Bach Partita that pays homage to Frank Gehry—the name is both a play on the architect’s initials (Frank Owen Gehry) and Gehry’s sailboat, Foggy. The work is also inspired by the historic moment when music was first played in Walt Disney Concert Hall during Salonen’s tenure as the LA Phil’s Music Director. FOG received its world premiere at Colburn in February 2019, conducted by Salonen at a special concert celebrating Gehry’s 90th birthday. György Ligeti’s Violin Concerto and Stravinsky’s Pulcinella (complete ballet) close out the concert.
Geneva Lewis, who has been praised as “clearly one to watch” by Musical America, performs in three other programs: Sunday’s Morning Meditation (June 14), Friday morning’s Reflection (June 12), and Thursday evening’s Quartet for the End of Time (June 11) which will feature Lewis in the U.S. premiere of Salonen’s new work for violin and cello.
Both Geneva Lewis and Leila Josefowicz are alumni of Colburn’s Community School of Performing Arts, a dynamic training ground that has helped shape generations of world-class artists through high-quality arts education for students of all ages and skill levels. Lewis studied with Colburn faculty violinist Aimée Kreston and Josefowicz studied with Jascha Heifetz Distinguished Violin Chair Robert Lipsett.
On Saturday, June 13, Salonen Fellows Mert Yalniz and Aleksandra Melaniuk join Salonen to lead the LA Phil New Music Group and violinist Geneva Lewis in a program of Gabriella Smith, Salonen, Magnus Lindberg, Anna Thorvaldsdottir and John Adams. Salonen joined the Colburn faculty in September 2018 to establish and lead the Negaunee Conducting Program, a pre-professional conducting program that supports a small, select group of students, known as Salonen Fellows. For the past three years, under Salonen’s guidance, Yalniz and Melaniuk have gained significant real-world podium experience, including working with Salonen at the San Francisco Symphony, and served as preparatory conductors for the Colburn Orchestra. They also conduct the Zipper Outreach Orchestra, Colburn’s performing ensemble for its community engagement activities, and have appeared on stages at The Soraya, UCLA’s Royce Hall, and the Fred Kavli Theatre at the Bank of America Performing Arts Center in Thousand Oaks.
On the afternoon of Friday, June 12, LA Dance Project will give the world premiere of a festival-commissioned work featuring choreography by Janie Taylor, Artistic Director of Colburn’s Trudl Zipper Dance Institute. Created in response to four works from Luciano Berio’s Sequenza series, the program brings together choreography by Taylor, Jobel Medina, and Madeline Hollander. With live music performed by festival artists, the work highlights the close interplay between dancer and musician, while exploring the unexpected sonic landscape of Berio’s writing and his use of extended techniques through dance. A second performance will take place on the afternoon of Saturday, June 13.
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John & Jen Rubicon Theatre Company (2/10-2/28) |
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Miss Magnolia Beaumont Goes to Provincetown The California Theatre of Santa Rosa (7/01-7/01) |
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Cinderella Ballet Yucaipa Performing Arts Center Indoor Theatre (6/26-6/28) |
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Forbidden Kiss LIVE - RAW Boheme The California Theatre of Santa Rosa (7/17-7/17) |
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Americana Evening - Songwriter Jam The California Theatre of Santa Rosa (6/28-6/28) |
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Karaoke and Airaoke with the cast of AIRNESS The California Theatre of Santa Rosa (6/25-6/25) |
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Wreckless Strangers and PTI The California Theatre of Santa Rosa (6/26-6/26) |
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Ragtime Rubicon Theatre Company (10/21-11/08) |
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Ojai Playwrights Conference New Works Festival Ojai Playwrights Conference (7/30-8/02) |
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Alice in Wonderland by International Ballet Stars in Santa Barbara, CA! The Granada Theatre (4/22-4/22) |