The Ojai Musical Festival, which returns for its 78th edition June 6-9, recently announced its program for 2024. Under the guidance of Music Director Mitsuko Uchida, the Festival will include more than 20 music events over the four days.
Each year the Festival welcomes up to 5,000 patrons to engage with a fresh creative direction and exciting performers. Founded in 1947, Ojai Musical Festival has expanded, shifted, and molded as culture and history shift around us.
Uchida, an acclaimed pianist, last performed at the 2004 Festival and co-music directed in 1998. She is now coming back as Music Director in 2024, sharing her internationally celebrated partnership with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
“It’s been so rewarding to plan this particular festival with Mitsuko, who has such a fondness for Ojai,” stated Ara Guzelimian, Artistic and Executive Director. “When she revisits her lifelong exploration of something as central as Mozart piano concertos, she does so with a sense of profound exploration and constant renewal.”
Explaining how this year there’s a mix between the past and present, the old and new, and also some “complete departures,” Guzelimian stated, “I always want the Ojai Festival to be defined by a sense of adventure and discovery, where you fall in love with something you didn’t even know existed.”
This year, the Festival welcomes: Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Brentano String Quartet, violinist Alexi Kenney, cellist Jay Campbell, and harpist Julie Smith Phillips among others. Further, the Festival introduces: soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, percussionist Sae Hashimoto, accordionist Ljubinka Kulisic, and bassist Rick Stotijn to the excited audience.
Festival passes are now on sale, with additional programming and single ticket purchases available later in the spring. For more information and biographies on the performers, visit ojaifestival.org/topic/artists/2024-artists-composers/.
