Colburn Orchestra Makes Ojai Festival Debut With Two Performances Under the Baton of Festival Music Director and Colburn Faculty Esa-Pekka Salonen
Salonen Fellows Mert Yalniz and Aleksandra Melaniuk Conduct Saturday Evening Concert
Colburn Alumna Leila Josefowicz Joins Colburn Orchestra for Finale Concert
Colburn Alumna Geneva Lewis Gives U.S. Premiere of Salonen’s New Work for Violin and Cello
LA Dance Project Presents World Premiere of New Work Choreographed by Janie Taylor, Colburn’s Artistic Director, Trudl Zipper Dance Institute
June 11 – 14, 2026
ojaifestival.org
(Tuesday, May 19, 2026, Los Angeles) – Colburn School takes center stage at this year’s landmark 80th Ojai Music Festival, with performances spanning the festival’s programming. In its Ojai Festival debut, the Colburn Orchestra will perform twice, including the festival’s finale under the baton of Festival Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen, who leads the Negaunee Conducting Program and holds the Maestro Ernst H. Katz Chair of Conducting Studies at Colburn. This performance will also feature Colburn alumna Geneva Lewis and Leila Josefowicz. Salonen Fellows Mert Yalniz and Aleksandra Melaniuk share the podium with Salonen in Saturday night’s concert featuring the LA Phil New Music Group alongside Lewis, who appears in five events throughout the festival, including the opening-night U.S. premiere of Salonen’s new work for violin and cello. LA Dance Project will also give the world premiere of a festival-commissioned work choreographed by Janie Taylor, Artistic Director of Colburn’s Trudl Zipper Dance Institute. Together, these performances showcase Colburn’s far-reaching impact across music, dance, and the broader artistic landscape.
On Friday, June 12, Salonen leads the Colburn Orchestra in Steven Stucky’s Colburn Variations, a work honoring the students, faculty, and staff of Colburn, as well as its founder, Richard D. Colburn. The program continues with Salonen’s kinēma, a lyrical, cinematic work, featuring clarinetist Anthony McGill. Witold Lutosławski’s Grave, (Metamorphoses for cello and strings) featuring cellist Jay Campbell follows, and the concert concludes with Schoenberg’s first large-scale work and one of his most popular, Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night).
For the Festival’s finale concert on Sunday, June 14, the Colburn Orchestra is joined by an array of celebrated guest artists: violinists and Colburn alumna Geneva Lewis and Leila Josefowicz, soprano Bridget Esler, tenor Eric Finbarr Carey, and baritone Abdiel González. J.S. Bach’s Prelude from Partita No. 3 in E major for violin, BWV 1006 opens the concert, followed by Salonen’s FOG, a dreamlike fantasy around the Bach Partita that pays homage to Frank Gehry—the name is both a play on the architect’s initials (Frank Owen Gehry) and Gehry’s sailboat, Foggy. The work is also inspired by the historic moment when music was first played in Walt Disney Concert Hall during Salonen’s tenure as the LA Phil’s Music Director. FOG received its world premiere at Colburn in February 2019, conducted by Salonen at a special concert celebrating Gehry’s 90th birthday. György Ligeti’s Violin Concerto and Stravinsky’s Pulcinella (complete ballet) close out the concert.
Geneva Lewis, who has been praised as “clearly one to watch” by Musical America, performs in three other programs: Sunday’s Morning Meditation (June 14), Friday morning’s Reflection (June 12), and Thursday evening’s Quartet for the End of Time (June 11) which will feature Lewis in the U.S. premiere of Salonen’s new work for violin and cello.
Both Geneva Lewis and Leila Josefowicz are alumni of Colburn’s Community School of Performing Arts, a dynamic training ground that has helped shape generations of world-class artists through high-quality arts education for students of all ages and skill levels. Lewis studied with Colburn faculty violinist Aimée Kreston and Josefowicz studied with Jascha Heifetz Distinguished Violin Chair Robert Lipsett.
On Saturday, June 13, Salonen Fellows Mert Yalniz and Aleksandra Melaniuk join Salonen to lead the LA Phil New Music Group and violinist Geneva Lewis in a program of Gabriella Smith, Salonen, Magnus Lindberg, Anna Thorvaldsdottir and John Adams. Salonen joined the Colburn faculty in September 2018 to establish and lead the Negaunee Conducting Program, a pre-professional conducting program that supports a small, select group of students, known as Salonen Fellows. For the past three years, under Salonen’s guidance, Yalniz and Melaniuk have gained significant real-world podium experience, including working with Salonen at the San Francisco Symphony, and served as preparatory conductors for the Colburn Orchestra. They also conduct the Zipper Outreach Orchestra, Colburn’s performing ensemble for its community engagement activities, and have appeared on stages at The Soraya, UCLA’s Royce Hall, and the Fred Kavli Theatre at the Bank of America Performing Arts Center in Thousand Oaks.
On the afternoon of Friday, June 12, LA Dance Project will give the world premiere of a festival-commissioned work featuring choreography by Janie Taylor, Artistic Director of Colburn’s Trudl Zipper Dance Institute. Created in response to four works from Luciano Berio’s Sequenza series, the program brings together choreography by Taylor, Jobel Medina, and Madeline Hollander. With live music performed by festival artists, the work highlights the close interplay between dancer and musician, while exploring the unexpected sonic landscape of Berio’s writing and his use of extended techniques through dance. A second performance will take place on the afternoon of Saturday, June 13.
To purchase tickets and view the festival schedule, please visit ojaifestival.org.
About Colburn School
A performing arts institution located in the heart of Los Angeles, the COLBURN SCHOOL trains students from beginners to those about to embark on professional careers. The academic units of the School provide a complete spectrum of music and dance education united by a single philosophy: that all who desire to study music or dance should have access to top-level instruction.
- The diploma- and degree-granting Conservatory of Music is distinguished by a unique all-scholarship model, renowned faculty, and outstanding performance opportunities. It prepares the very highest level of collegiate musicians for professional careers.
- The Music Academy is a highly selective training program for gifted young pre-collegiate musicians, designed to prepare students for conservatory study and performing careers at the highest levels of achievement. This residential program balances performance, musical instruction, and academics.
- The Community School of Performing Arts welcomes students of all ages, from seven months old to adults. It offers more than 120 classes each year in orchestral instruments, piano, guitar, voice, jazz, music theory, drama, and ensembles including orchestra, choir, and chamber music.
- The Trudl Zipper Dance Institute develops performers of all levels, from aspiring professionals in the Dance Academy to beginners starting in Youth Dance. Students of all levels receive training in ballet, tap, and modern genres as part of a comprehensive dance education.
- Created to serve all units of the School, the Center for Innovation and Community Impact empowers the musical and dance leaders of tomorrow by nurturing students’ passion and ability to serve their communities, preparing them for sustainable careers, and embracing the development of new ideas. The Center embodies Colburn’s commitment to developing young artists with the curiosity, skills, and commitment to make a difference in their field.
Each year, more than 2,000 students from around the world come to Colburn to benefit from the renowned faculty, exceptional facilities, and focus on excellence that unites the community.
In 2024, the Colburn School broke ground on a transformational campus expansion designed by Frank Gehry. Located across the street from the School’s existing campus at the intersection of Olive and Second Streets, the building will enable the School to expand its mission of presenting programs for the public. Gehry’s design includes a 1,000-seat in-the-round concert hall named for Terri and Jerry Kohl, five professional-sized dance studios including a 100-seat studio theater, and gardens that bring fresh air and green spaces to the downtown landscape. The expansion will more than double the facilities for the School’s Trudl Zipper Dance Institute, creating one of the most comprehensive dance education complexes in Southern California.
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The Ojai Music Festival represents an ideal of adventurous, open-minded, and open-hearted programming in the most beautiful and welcoming settings, with audiences and artists to match its aspirations. Now in its 80th year, the Festival remains a creative laboratory for thought-provoking musical experiences, bringing together innovative artists and curious audiences in an intimate, idyllic outdoor setting. Each Festival’s narrative is guided by a different Music Director, whose distinctive perspectives shape programming—ensuring energized festivals year after year. Throughout each year, the Ojai Music Festival contributes to Southern California’s cultural landscape with in-person and online programming as well as robust educational offerings that serve thousands of public-school students and seniors. The organization’s apex is the world-renowned Festival, which takes place over four days in Ojai, a breathtaking valley 75 miles from Los Angeles, which is a perennial platform for the fresh and unexpected. During the immersive experience, a mingling of the most curious take part in concerts, symposia, free community events, and social gatherings. The intimate Festival weekend, considered a highlight of the international summer music season, welcomes up to 5,000 patrons and reaches exponentially more audiences worldwide through streaming and broadcasts of concerts and discussions throughout the year.
Since its founding in 1947, the Ojai Music Festival has presented expansive programming in unusual ways with an eclectic mix of new and rarely performed music, as well as refreshing juxtapositions of musical styles. Through its signature structure of the Artistic Director appointing a different Music Director each year, Ojai has presented a “who’s who” of music including Mitsuko Uchida, Rhiannon Giddens, American Modern Opera Company (AMOC*), Vijay Iyer, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, and Barbara Hannigan in recent years; throughout its history, featured artists have included Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, Michael Tilson Thomas, Kent Nagano, Pierre Boulez, John Adams, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Robert Spano, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, David Robertson, Eighth Blackbird, George Benjamin, Dawn Upshaw, Leif Ove Andsnes, Mark Morris, Jeremy Denk, Steven Schick, Matthias Pintscher, and Peter Sellars.
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