The Ojai Music Festival’s Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian announces Rhiannon Giddens as the Festival’s next Music Director for the 77th Festival, June 8 to 11, 2023. The initial list of guest artists for the 2023 Festival include kamancheh player/composer Kayhan Kalhor, pipa player Wu Man, as well as multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, and the Attacca Quartet, composed of violinists Amy Schroeder and Domenic Salerni, violist Nathan Schram, and cellist Andrew Yee. Additional artists, projects, and programming for the 2023 Ojai Music Festival will be announced in the coming months.
“I am so thrilled that Rhiannon Giddens accepted my invitation to become Music Director of the 2023 Ojai Music Festival. I have boundless admiration for Rhiannon as both a compelling musician and as an extraordinary artistic catalyst bringing together musical worlds towards important philosophical, cultural, and social goals,” said Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian.
“The openness and flexibility of the Ojai Festival is an ideal forum for such an artist to have complete freedom to imagine and explore. Rhiannon created a special bond with Ojai and our audiences when she made her debut at the 2021 Festival. She and the Attacca Quartet found an immediate connection when they first met last year in Ojai, and she invited the quartet to join her for Ojai 2023, to grow and explore that partnership. Francesco Turrisi brings such boundless musical fluencies, from early music to jazz, from the traditional music of multiple cultures to new music by emerging composers. We have spoken about Rhiannon’s extraordinary embrace of so many musical languages as a thread in the 2023 Ojai Festival, with particular focus in the deep traditions of a classical music in non-Western cultures and the encounter of like-instruments from very different cultures. We are so happy that the Persian kamancheh player/composer Kayhan Kalhor and the great pipa player Wu Man will join us next June in these explorations. These plans are a work-in-progress at this early stage, and we look forward to being joined by a number of great collaborators and composers, who will be announced in the coming months.”
Kamancheh/composer Kayhan Kalhor will make his first Ojai appearances at the 2023 Festival. Pipa player Wu Man returns to Ojai for the first time since the 2015 Festival, where she partnered with then Music Director Steven Schick. Multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi and the Attacca Quartet previously joined Rhiannon Giddens in Ojai during the 2021 Festival in September with Music Director John Adams.
The Festival shares this news as artists and audiences anticipate gathering in Ojai for the upcoming 76th Festival (June 9-12, 2022) with the discipline-colliding collective AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company) as Music Director. Please visit OjaiFestival.org for 2022 Festival details.