Ojai Festival Still in Debt but the Show Will Go On : Music: The annual spring event will return May 31 for its 45th year, thanks to some ‘creative fund raising.’

The Ojai Music Festival, still operating with a deficit of “almost exactly $100,000,” according to festival director Christopher Hunt, nevertheless will mount its 45th annual late-spring festival in the Ventura County community, May 31-June 2.

In keeping with the festival’s long-standing focus on new music and living composers, John Harbison and Peter Maxwell Davies will conduct their own works, as well as music by Mozart. But underlying the performances will be a certain financial uncertainty, despite recent gifts and donations received toward reduction of the deficit.

The cost of this year’s festival, Hunt told The Times recently, will be in the neighborhood of $420,000, which the director said is an increase of 15% over the 1990 budget.

“We still hope, within these two years, 1991 and 1992, to retire the deficit completely while still raising funds for our operating costs,” Hunt said.

“In the present financial climate, that becomes more difficult than expected. It could take three years instead of two.”

Since accepting his Ojai post and the six-figure deficit in August, Hunt has taken on another job, that of artistic consultant for contemporary programming at Lincoln Center in New York. He commutes between coasts, and talked to The Times recently from his New York City office.

“We decided to bite the bullet,” when the size of the deficit was disclosed last summer, said Joan Kemper, president of the festival’s board of directors, speaking from Ojai on Thursday.

“We couldn’t see skipping a year (of presenting the festival) and losing momentum, so we have gone into creative fund raising.”

One strategy, now being accomplished through the purchase, by a partnership called the Friends of the Festival, of the building which houses the festival offices, is to use the equity on the Festival’s property.

Another is the receiving of large gifts of money or real estate. In the past month, Kemper said, one anonymous Ojai donor has given the festival “a large piece of land, a commercial lot. When we sell it--and we will not just hold it--we can realize a large amount towards (the deficit).

“If we can make the 1991 festival successful artistically and financially, paying down the deficit may still be possible within these two years,” Kemper concluded.

At the 1991 festival, four of the five concerts will be performed in Festival Bowl in Libbey Park in downtown Ojai, while the fifth will take place at Ojai Presbyterian Church. The performers, in addition to Harbison and Maxwell Davies, include the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, mezzo-soprano Janice Felty, tenor David Gordon, baritone Sanford Sylvan, clarinetist Charles Neidich and violinist Rosemary Harbison.

The programs:

* May 31 at 8:30 p.m.: John Harbison conducts arias and dances by Mozart and two of his own works: the Concerto (1985) for oboe, clarinet and strings and “Exequien for Calvin Simmons” (1982).

* June 1 at 5 p.m.: At Festival Bowl, Maxwell Davies conducts the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in music by Mozart and two works by himself: the world premiere of his “Ojai Festival Overture,” and his Clarinet Concerto (1990).

* June 1 at 9:30 p.m.: In Ojai Presbyterian Church, Harbison and Maxwell Davies conduct Mozart rarities, Harbison’s song-cycle, “Words From Paterson,” as sung by Sanford Sylvan, and Maxwell Davies’ Dance Suite (1978) for violin and chamber ensemble, with Rosemary Harbison the soloist.

* June 2 at noon: Harbison leads a program of vocal music including the world premiere of his own Motet, “Ave Verum Corpus” (1991), as well as his “Elegiac Songs” (1974), and a cantata and motet by Mozart.

* June 2 at 5 p.m.: Maxwell Davies conducts Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto and Four Minuets and Four German Dances, plus his own Concerto for Trumpet and Horn (1989) and “Threnody (for Michael Vyner)” (1990).

Information: P.O. Box 185, Ojai 93024.