# Ojaifornia Here I Come, 2014



## arpeggio

Sorry I have taken so long to respond but there is more to life than Talk Classical.
Because of all of the activities, we purchased tickets to everything (except the special donor recitals), I have decided to make a separate entry for each day of the Festival.


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## arpeggio

*Ojaifornia Here I Come-Part One-Thursday, June 12, 2014*

The music director for this year's festival was Jeremy Denk. Mr. Denk was responsible for preparing the music program.

The first event we attended were two panel discussions.

The first was with Mr. Denk where he explained the underlying theme for this year's festival was Charles Rosen's Book, The Classical Style. I know who Charles Rosen is. I have some recordings of him performing the music of Elliott Carter. To acknowledge one of the many gaps in my knowledge of classical music, I had never heard of it. I was probably the only one in the auditorium who was unfamiliar with the book. I had no idea that Rosen was a successful writer. Well the people on the stage and in the auditorium knew. Mr. Denk knew Rosen and it was clear that he was a big fan of him.

The second panel discussion was with Colin and Eric Jacobson. They are two musicians who started the chamber orchestra The Knights and the string quartet The Brooklyn Rider. The thrust of the discussion was how ensembles like orchestras can survive in the current economic climate. It appears that The Knights has been very successful.

After the discussion I had a talk with the moderator, Ara Guzelmian, about the "classical music is dead crowd". He told me that there are parts of the United States were classical music is struggling, but it is still doing well in Europe and parts of Asia. Based on his experience the only people he has run into who think classical music is dead are American and/or people who have an animas toward contemporary music.

I had also had discussions about this with some of the other artists including a member of Uri Caine Ensemble, a jazz group. He told me that one of the reasons that jazz is doing so well in Europe is because even the jazz groups there can get subsidies from the government.

The economic model that is used here in the United States makes it difficult for most forms on non-popular music, including jazz and classical, to survive.

The concert Thursday night had two parts.

The first part was very unusual. Mr. Denk performed piano music of Schubert and Janacek. He would alternate between the works of Schubert and Janacek. He would perform few pieces of Schubert than a few by Janacek. Mr. Denk was trying to show the relationship between these two composers by performing the works without a pause.

The second part after the intermission was really unique. The Uri Caine ensemble, a jazz group, performed jazz realizations of various works of Mahler, like the first movement of the Fifth Symphony. The ensemble was composed of piano, clarinet/saxophone, trumpet (this guy was really smoking), violin, bass, drums and a guy who produced sound effects with LP's on various turntables.

The Libby Bowl Accommodates about one thousands seats and a few hundred in the lawn area. I would guesstimate that between the lawn seats and the stadium there were over one thousand people in attendance.


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## PetrB

Sounds invigorating, exciting, and with many many pleasures in store.
By the time the festival is over, you will be singing:

_"Oh me, oh me, oh my - Oh! 
why did I e-ver leave Ojai - Oh?"_


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