After 23 years, Mitsuko gets her festival back
mainIt was 1998 when Mitsuko Uchida was joint music director of the Ojai festival and 2004 when she last played there. Now they’ve asked her back to preside in 2021. What took them so long?
Also coming up at Ojai: Barbara Hannigan will be music director in 2019, Patricia Kopatchinskaja in 2020.
Good calls.
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Mitsuko Uchida, Barbara Hannigan, Patricia Kopatchinskaja — girls, girls, girls, with Deborah Borda in charge.
Sorry to puncture this conspiracy theory, but Deborah Borda has nothing to do with the running of the Ojai Festival. Tom Morris, formerly CEO of the Cleveland Orchestra and the Boston Symphony, is the chief executive.
Ojai has been joined at the hip to LA from the start and to the LA Phil for going on 50 years.
Starting in 1970, the LA Phil made many appearances at Ojai, but the relationship ended in 2003, Ernest Fleischmann’s final year as artistic director.
No, the “relationship” is quite a bit more complex than just appearances in Ojai by the LA Phil.
It’s a very dramatic headline:
>Mitsuko gets her festival back
It never was ‘her’ festival, but the headline makes it sounds like there’s been a great struggle.