Come hear from Ara Guzelimian, the Festivals Artistic and Executive Director, about the upcoming 80th Ojai Music Festival, running June 11 to 14, 2026.
The upcoming Festival focuses on many dimensions of Music Director’s Esa-Pekka Salonen’s artistic life.
“The tradition of the Ojai Music Festival is that there is no tradition other than that people can do things that they wouldn’t be able to do elsewhere. Ojai invites us to dream, and it’s a place where dreams can become reality.” – Esa-Pekka Salonen
Central to his musical life, the 2026 Ojai Music Festival will feature works by Salonen including the U.S. premiere of his new work for violin and cello with Geneva Lewis and Conor Hanick and the first complete performance of his Six Preludes for piano with Conor Hanick. Salonen’s works stand alongside those of his teachers Franco Donatoni, Niccolò Castiglioni, and Vinko Globokar, as well as those by friends and colleagues Steven Stucky, Witold Lutosławski, Magnus Lindberg, Oliver Knussen, Kaija Saariaho, and John Adams, whose Iron Jig will receive its world premiere by the Attacca Quartet. Additional featured works by Salonen will include his Arabesques for Olly, Homunculus, kínēma, Lachen verlernt, and Fog. Salonen will conduct three evening weekend concerts in Libbey Bowl.
The 2026 Festival will acknowledge defining musical figures of its first 80 years, including Igor Stravinsky and Olivier Messiaen, both of whom took part memorably in the Festival (Stravinsky in 1955 and 1956, Messiaen in 1985). Giants of 20th century music are featured throughout the Festival, including Luciano Berio, George Crumb, Morton Feldman, György Ligeti, Arnold Schoenberg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Iannis Xenakis. Evening concerts at the Libbey Bowl will be anchored by Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), and the Festival will conclude with Stravinsky’s Pulcinella (complete ballet). Standing alongside these seminal figures of the last century will be works by composers of today including Shye Ben Tzur, Bryce Dessner, Reena Esmail, Brian Ferneyhough, Jonny Greenwood, Michael Ippolito, David Lang, Alvin Lucier, Jessie Montgomery, Radiohead, Rajasthan Express, Gabriella Smith, and Anna Thorvaldsdóttir.
The resident ensembles will celebrate Esa-Pekka Salonen’s longstanding ties to Los Angeles, including his transformative tenure as Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. At Ojai, he will be joined by members of the LA Phil New Music Group in a unique program tailored specifically for the Ojai Festival.
Celebrated 2026 Festival artists will include Anthony McGill, principal clarinet of the New York Philharmonic, where he was soloist in that orchestra’s 2023 performance of Salonen’s concerto kínēma with the composer conducting, a partnership that will be renewed at Ojai. Violinists Leila Josefowicz and Geneva Lewis (both former Colburn School students); cellist Jay Campbell; conductors Aleksandra Melaniuk and Mert Yalniz; pianists Conor Hanick, John Novacek, Todd Moellenberg, and Aron Kallay; soprano Bridget Esler; tenor Eric Finbarr Carey; flutist Rose Lombardo; percussionist Jonathan Hepfer; and accordionist Hanzhi Wang comprise the 2026 Festival’s family of artists.
The 2026 Festival also marks the conclusion of Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian’s defining tenure. His current tenure began with the virtual 74th Festival in June 2020 with Music Director Matthias Pintscher and continued in person in September 2021 with that year’s Music Director John Adams. That was followed by Music Directors AMOC* (American Modern Opera Company), Rhiannon Giddens, Mitsuko Uchida, and Claire Chase. Guzelimian had also served as Ojai’s Artistic Director from 1992 to 1997, working closely with Festival Music Directors Pierre Boulez, John Adams, Kent Nagano, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Emanuel Ax. Conductor/composer/pianist Teddy Abrams was named Ojai’s next Artistic and Executive Director effective September 1, 2026, with his first Festival to be the 81st Festival in June 2027. He will join the ranks of such distinguished predecessors as Guzelimian, Thomas W. Morris, Ernest Fleischmann, and Lawrence Morton.