Ojai Festival Events to Include U.S.-Latin Music Symposium

As part of this year’s programming theme, Music of and About the Americas, the 55th annual Ojai Music Festival, May 30 to June 3, will host an all-day symposium titled “The New Musical Immigrants: A U.S./Latin-American Dialogue,” bringing together musicians, conductors, music scholars and management executives for series of talks and panels.

The symposium, scheduled for June 1 and open to the public, will be organized by Harvard musicology professor Karen Painter and festival artistic director Ernest Fleischmann.

Participants will include Painter and University of Texas at Austin professors Elizabeth Crist and Gerard Behague; composers John Adams, Tania Leon, Argentine rising star Osvaldo Golijov, Steven Stucky and Esa-Pekka Salonen--also music director of the festival as well as the Los Angeles Philharmonic--will discuss the Latin-American presence on U.S. concert programs on a panel moderated by Los Angeles Philharmonic managing director Deborah Borda.

Also on the program, announced Monday at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, are recital and concert performances by American soprano Dawn Upshaw, who will also teach a master class for young singers; British pianist Paul Crossley; the Cuarteto Latinoamericano, and Latin jazz musicians Oscar-Castro Neves and Dori Caymmi and Friends, who will perform in a tribute concert to Brazilian songwriter Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Salonen will conduct the Los Angeles Philharmonic in Messiaen’s “From the Canyons to the Stars,” with Crossley as piano soloist, and in a final concert including music composed by Adams, Golijov, Leon and Cuban composer Julian Orbon and “La Noche de los Mayas” by Silvestre Revueltas.

As an adjunct to the festival, the Ojai Art Center will host an exhibition of multicultural work during June titled “Applied Art of the Americas,” curated by Carol Sauvion of Los Angeles’ FreeHand Gallery. Pieces on display include quilts by Katalin Starzer and Brazilian arts and crafts from the collection of Dorothy and Paul Harstein.

Tickets for the symposium, concerts and recitals range from $7.50 to $55. Call (805) 646-2053 or check the Web site https://www.ojaifestival.org for information.