Wednesday (6/8) on the Los Angeles Times blog Culture Monster, Christopher Hawthorne writes, “If you were familiar with the experimental, risk-taking reputation of the Ojai Music Festival but didn’t know much about the town where it is held every June, you might assume that the festival’s rebuilt performance space, known as Libbey Bowl, would be a daring, attention-getting piece of architecture. … If, on the other hand, you knew all about Ojai’s civic personality but not a lot about its music festival, you might imagine something far more traditional. … The new Libbey Bowl, designed by Ojai architect David Bury and completed in time for this year’s festival, which begins Thursday, is a good deal closer to the second category than the first. … The contrast between the festival’s iconoclastic musical history and the restrained look of its $4-million new home flows more from practical than aesthetic concerns. … The new Libbey Bowl is in every functional sense a major upgrade. Wooden, splinter-giving benches have been replaced with 26 rows of dark green plastic seats. The stage and the clamshell-style band shell arcing over it have been raised by 6 feet and turned a few significant degrees to the west, away from the nearby tennis courts.”
Posted June 8, 2011
