Ojai music fest to take a closer listen to Golijov

The music of Osvaldo Golijov will be the focus of the Ojai Music Festival’s 60th season, artistic director Thomas W. Morris has announced. Three of the composer’s major works will be performed during the June 8-11 festival: the revised one-act opera “Ainadamar” in its West Coast premiere, the Grammy-nominated song cycle “Ayre” and the cantata “Oceana.”

Soprano Dawn Upshaw will sing in “Ainadamar” and “Ayre,” both of which Golijov composed for her. Robert Spano, this year’s festival music director, will conduct the Atlanta Symphony and Chamber Chorus.

Also appearing, among other guest artists, will be the new music ensemble eighth blackbird, soprano Jessica Rivera, mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor and Brazilian vocalist Luciana Souza.

Other festival offerings will include Spano performing one of John Cage’s best-known texts, “Lecture on Nothing,” paired with Conlon Nancarrow’s “Selected Studies for Player Piano”; an a cappella program of works by Copland, Durufle, Messiaen, Tallis, Tavener and Vaughan Williams, conducted by Atlanta Symphony Orchestra director of choruses Norman MacKenzie; and a concert of popular and classical Latin music.

As an ancillary event, on June 10 the Ojai Playhouse will present a free screening of “Betty Freeman: A Life for the Unknown,” a documentary about the longtime Ojai supporter and influential patron of contemporary music who has supported the careers of many artists over the last 40 years.