オハイ音楽祭、郡から$75Kの助成金を受ける
This article was originally published by Ojai Valley News.
The Ojai Music Festival has received an Arts and Culture Investment Fund Grant from the County of Ventura and the Ventura County Community Foundation.
The $75,000 grant will support the internationally recognized annual Ojai Music Festival, which presents classical and contemporary music featuring today’s most innovative and celebrated artists; an expansion of its year-round activities, that will include public performances and partnerships in the Ojai community and the broader Ventura County; and the broadening of its BRAVO education program in public schools with SCORE, a music composition class for high school students.
“We are deeply grateful to the County and the Board of Supervisors for this very generous and meaningful support,” said Ara Guzelimian, artistic and executive director of the Ojai Music Festival. “This marks an important milestone moment in the cultural life of Ventura County, recognizing and supporting the ever-growing range of vibrant arts activity in our communities.”
The Arts and Culture Investment Fund is Ventura County’s first dedicated arts and culture grant program, which as approved by the Board of Supervisors as part of the County’s 2023 Recovery Plan to support ongoing recovery from the pandemic. Funding supports both nonprofit arts and culture organizations and artists based in Ventura County. For more information and the Arts and Culture Investment Fund and a complete list of grant recipients, please visit ventura.org/arts.
Ojai Music Festival 2025
The 79th Ojai Music Festival, June 5 to 8, 2025, will welcome flutist Claire Chase as music director, Guzelimian announced. Visit ojaifestival.org for more information.
Chase, described by The New York Times as “the North Star of her instrument’s ever-expanding universe,” is a musician, interdisciplinary artist, and educator. Passionately dedicated to the creation of new ecosystems for the music of our time, Chase has given the world premieres of hundreds of new works by a new generation of artists, and in 2013 launched the 24-year commissioning project, Density 2036. Now in its 11th year, Density 2036 reimagines the solo flute literature over a quarter-century through commissions, performances, recordings, education, and an accessible archive at density2036.org.
Chase cofounded the International Contemporary Ensemble in 2001, was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2012, and in 2017 was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Chase is Professor of the Practice of Music at Harvard University’s Department of Music, a Creative Associate at The Juilliard School, and a Collaborative Partner with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the San Francisco Symphony.
“When Ara called me with the invitation, I nearly dropped the phone! The Ojai Festival has been a kind of dreamland for me since I was a kid growing up in Southern California, and I have the deepest affection for the audiences at Ojai — I don’t know that a more curious, adventurous, and open-eared group of listeners exists anywhere in the world. I’m tremendously excited to work with Ara to craft experiences that I hope will animate, complicate, and celebrate the connections be- tween musics of the past and the beating-heart present,” Chase shared.
Previously, Chase performed at the Ojai Music Festival with the International Contemporary Ensemble in 2015 with that year’s Music Director Steven Schick, in 2016 with Music Director Peter Sellars, and in 2017 with Music Director Vijay Iyer.