“Just on the heels of appointing its latest executive director [Tamara Nuzzaci Park, who arrives this June], the Ojai Festival has taken the unusual step of announcing the next three individuals who will serve as music directors after this summer’s Steven Schick,” reports Susan Elliott in Wednesday’s (4/15) MusicalAmerica.com (password required). “As is customary, the four-day festival in the verdant hills of southern California has a different music director every summer, with Thomas Morris remaining constant as Artistic Director. The summer of 2016 (June 9-12), Ojai’s 70th anniversary, will see Musical America’s 2015 Artist of the Year Peter Sellars as music director, choosing the programs and artists who perform them.… The 2018 festival (June 7-10) sees conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen … return for his third round as music director.… Sandwiched between the two above superstars, in the summer of 2017 (June 8-11), will be Vijay Iyer as music director. Iyer seems to have many hands in many genres: he was Downbeat magazine’s 2014 Pianist of the Year, a 2013 MacArthur Fellows, Professor of the Arts in the Department of Music at Harvard University, and director of the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music.”
Posted April 20, 2015
Pictured left to right: Peter Sellars, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Vijay Iyer
