“Chad Smith, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s chief operating officer, has been named artistic director of the Ojai Music Festival for a three-year term to start in 2020,” writes Jessica Gelt in Wednesday’s (3/21) Los Angeles Times. “Smith will take over in Ojai for Thomas W. Morris, who is retiring in 2019 after 16 years in the position. Smith will continue to serve in his post at the L.A. Phil while beginning work with Ojai’s 2020 music director, Matthias Pintscher…. Smith’s term will include the 75th anniversary of the festival he said he has loved since 2001, when he first visited Ojai as an assistant to San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas. Esa-Pekka Salonen, then music director of the L.A. Phil, was artistic director of the Ojai Festival…. Smith said … he intends to honor the festival’s heritage while looking for novel ways to expand upon it. ‘Crucial to Ojai’s legacy is this idea of reinvention and change, and I hope we’ll begin finding ways to build on that,’ he said. … his immediate goal is to study past programming, gathering data and talking to former music directors to find out how they each shaped their visions for the event.”
Posted March 21, 2018
