{"id":1831,"date":"2014-06-17T12:12:55","date_gmt":"2014-06-17T19:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/?p=1831"},"modified":"2014-06-26T10:47:59","modified_gmt":"2014-06-26T17:47:59","slug":"taking-stock-of-the-ojai-music-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2014\/06\/taking-stock-of-the-ojai-music-festival.html","title":{"rendered":"Taking Stock of the Ojai Music Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”JFTV8kkscmtLKx5Wmj1BWgosRiTRBgVg”]<\/p>\n

YOUR humble correspondent has just returned from the Ojai Music Festival<\/a>, which continues to be a great place to see classical music. Here are a few highlights of this year’s festival. On one major piece I break from the critical consensus and will get into that tomorrow.<\/p>\n
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Libbey Park’s Gazebo<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Music director Jeremy Denk is both a consummate interpreter of Charles Ives and an advocate for the New England maverick, so we got a good dose of his ornery modernism this year.<\/div>\n
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Given Ives’ originality and weight — perhaps our nation’s first important composer — he remains underperformed in most places in America. He was often neglected or misunderstood in his lifetime; his use of pastiche and musical collage and various avant-garde techniques makes him betted suited to ours. In any case, it was a pleasure to see so much Ives — including the violin sonatas (performed \u00a0with the hymns that provided some of their melodies) and Three Places in New England<\/em>.<\/div>\n
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Besides Denk himself (who played on the violin sonatas), the young composer Timo Andres spent a lot of time on the piano bench. His recomposition of Mozart’s Coronation Concerto — there are many blank spots for the left hand on Mozart’s original — was one of the weekend’s highlights for me.<\/div>\n
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Jeremy Denk<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Kurt Weill was another composer who showed up more than once at the festival. The Seven Deadly Sins<\/em> (libretto by Brecht) was a lot of fun, and well sung by bombshell Storm Large, portraying a woman who experienced all seven and then some, and quartet Hudson Shad.<\/p>\n
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Storm Large in Seven Deadly Sins<\/p><\/div>\n

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I missed the Sunday-morning-at-8 Hymnfest on Mediation Mount, but heard it was powerful. Last year’s equivalent was a real highlight for me.<\/div>\n
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The mix of canonical works (Mozart’s Jupiter<\/em>, Haydn’s\u00a0 quartet) and new or cutting-edge work worked for me. That said, there was no single piece this year that knocked me out, but I missed some stuff. Mark Swed went to just about all of it; here<\/a> it his wrap-up.<\/div>\n
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Ojai remains an absolutely lovely spot, especially Libbey Park, where much of the festival takes place, and the festival is smoothly run: You see what can happen when a community gets behind an arts event. We’re already looking forward to next year.<\/div>\n
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Caveat: While I\u2019ve reviewed books, jazz records and rock bands, I am not a professional critic but an culture reporter and enthusiast of the arts. I have linked to a credentialed critic; the distinction does, to me, matter.<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[contextly_auto_sidebar id=”JFTV8kkscmtLKx5Wmj1BWgosRiTRBgVg”] YOUR humble correspondent has just returned from the Ojai Music Festival, which continues to be a great place to see classical music. Here are a few highlights of this year’s festival. On one major piece I break from the critical consensus and will get into that tomorrow. Music director Jeremy Denk is both […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[80,622,54,582,29],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1831","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chamber-music","8":"category-charles-ives","9":"category-classical-music","10":"category-ojai-festival","11":"category-west-coast","12":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}