The sound designer’s job breaks down into two main parts, one is technical in nature and the other is artistic in nature. These two parts, however, are not exclusive of each other. There is overlap between the two and each dictates how the other should be done.
From a technical standpoint, the sound system at the Ojai Festival is very large and very complex. During the performance, it is my primary job to mix the show and make sure that the representation of the music for the audience works in a way that makes musical sense. I work closely with Tom Morris and the performing artists and composers to make sure that my artistic vision of a piece matches his and the festival’s artistic vision of the music.
This brings us to this year’s Festival and why it is a bit different than previous years. The Ensemble Modern is coming to us with a staff sound designer. I have been in communication with their designer to make sure that their technical as well as artistic needs are met.
This year’s program spans a large number of musical styles. We start on Thursday night with small chamber works. Saturday and Sunday have larger chamber works with a wide range of textures. The Elliott Carter oboe quartet has a very different feel than the Messiaen Oiseaux Exotiques which has a different feel than the Stravinsky L’Histoire du Soldat. They are all ensemble works and need to sound that way, but the textures are very different and that needs to come through when listening to it.
Then we have our Zappa performance. Ensemble Modern has a long history with this music going back to their work with Zappa himself. Because of this, there has been a very close collaboration with their sound designer to present these works. That collaboration has included consultations on the sound system design, console choice, microphone choice and many other technical needs. Because of the nature of this music, the needs for this concert are very different than the rest of the concerts in the festival. The word that describes those needs is “control.” We will have mammoth setup on stage with more than 60 microphones and 16 extra speakers. In addition, this year we are bringing in a second sound system that will be used only for this show.
One way to think of it is with the aesthetic difference between chamber music and rock and roll. In a chamber performance, the acoustic ensemble sound is the most important thing. My job with the amplification is to reproduce the experience of hearing the group in an acoustic space. In general, there are microphones to capture groups of instruments rather than the individual ones.
Rock music cannot exist on its own without amplification and manual balancing of the musicians. The sound of the ensemble as an acoustic entity has nothing to do with sound an audience hears. When mixing a rock performance, it is important to control all elements. Every instrument on stage has one or more microphone on it and there is no group micing. The sound the audience experiences is a much more “manufactured” sound.
This summer when you get to the Libby bowl, look at the speakers that will be hanging from the trussing. There are 2 distinct sets of speakers- 3 pairs of smaller speakers (far left and right and center) and 2 columns of speakers on either side. The smaller speakers are the same ones that we have been using for years there. They produce a sound that is very good for traditional classical music. The other set of speakers allows for more sound to come out into the audience and for it to come out in a way that we can easily control- something that is needed for a successful performance of the Zappa.
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( 3.1 / 214 )In the new Libbey Bowl, on the comfortable new chairs, patrons and supporters have an opportunity to donate money to name their own seat. More than simply naming a seat for themselves, however, donors are invited to commemorate the Music Director whose work inspired them most. To date, Festival attendees have named 3 seats in honor of their favorite Festival alumni, Aaron Copland, Mitsuko Uchida, and the Emerson Quartet.
Margaret and Fritz Menninger have chosen to honor Mitsuko Uchida with their gift. The Menningers hosted Ms. Uchida at their home during her time as Music Director. “Mitsuko was so wonderful to have as our guest. We remember her so fondly, and wanted to commemorate our time with her through this campaign,” said Margaret.
Another long-time Festival attendee, and Ojai Festival Women’s Committee member, Colleen Vivian is remembering Aaron Copland with her seat. Colleen said, “I wanted to celebrate Copland’s contributions to the American classical music canon, and I’m grateful to have this opportunity to name a seat for him.”
Finally, a donor who wishes to remain anonymous has chosen the Emerson Quartet as her honoree. She cites her admiration of their artistry and her tremendous enjoyment of their programming as the reasons for her choice.
In addition to these great artists, patrons have the opportunity to commemorate any of the Music Directors from our illustrious list. Pierre Boulez, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Kent Nagano are among the music directors that are still available in the campaign. We have been thrilled by the quick response and the enthusiasm we have seen so far. We hope you will consider joining your Festival friends in celebrating the Festival’s legacy.
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( 3 / 244 )Olivier Messaien was obsessed with birds and the songs they sang. He spent much of his career exploring their songs and trying to replicate the sounds in his compositions. So what does that sound like? Here's a priceless video in which he demonstrates (and that's his wife at the piano).
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Vingt Regards is by far the largest scale work in the piano repertoire. Yvonne Loriod’s place in musical history would have been assured by the simple fact that she gave the work’s premiere – in liberated Paris – in March 1945. But she had also directly inspired the work: the already celebrated (though emaciated) composer – recently repatriated from a prisoner of war camp in Silesia – and the young virtuoso pianist had fallen in love the moment they met in 1941. And this mammoth cycle is only one among numerous marvellous works, many involving ensemble or orchestra, which Messiaen composed specifically for her - and dedicated to her - across the span of his career. His response to her extraordinary playing produced one of the most original styles in all keyboard music, ranging from cascades of iridescent harmony to the most complex rhythms, from pounding percussive figuration to the ecstatic brilliance of birdsong. This quite simply marks her out as one of the great muses in the history of classical music. But beyond this, she had a very wide repertoire – ranging from Scarlatti, Mozart, Chopin, Albeniz and Debussy to the most adventurous composers of her day, whom she defended with courage and loyalty. She was also an utterly devoted pedagogue and, indeed, my own piano teacher for two years at the Paris Conservatoire, so I can personally testify to the passionate dedication she showed her students, which matched the most demanding artistic standards with an almost maternal tenderness.
It is, I believe, not an exaggeration to claim her as one of the outstanding musicians of our era; remembering in particular that she and Messiaen visited Ojai together a quarter-century ago, Tom Morris and I have decided to dedicate the upcoming performance of Vingt Regards to her memory.
-- George Benjamin, 19 May 2010
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( 2.9 / 263 )
Writing notes for the Ojai Festival brings new challenges each year because making connections between works and composers, and teasing themes across several days of concerts inevitably involves trying to “suss out” (as they say in Britain) the logic behind the programming choices of the festival’s music director. This year’s Festival bears the imprint of George Benjamin’s personality. I first met George in 1998 when he was my guest on one of the Los Angeles Philharmonic “Surprising Century” seminars. I had long admired his music for its inventiveness and diamond-edged precision, and was delighted to find him every bit as scintillating in conversation as he is in his scores. Our topic was rhythm, about which he had much to say, but our discussion ranged widely because for George no parameter, whether rhythm, timbre, pitch, or harmony, functions in isolation. He is a composer obsessed with a achieving a balance of elements, which is one reason his works are so deeply rewarding. As this year’s Festival program began to take shape – and it took shape rather quickly with relatively few last minute changes – it had a “classic” feel, the kind of Ojai program that celebrated the Festival’s distinguished legacy. Its concerts are anchored by major works by Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Boulez, and Messiaen, all composers who have had a direct relationship to the Festival and Southern California. And you couldn’t ask for a more compelling advocate for this music than Ensemble Modern, a group I have heard often in concert, in broadcast, and recording.
What leaped out immediately was the inclusion of Frank Zappa. His music has long been a staple of the Ensemble Modern repertoire and it is about time that Zappa had a hearing in Ojai, his own backyard. Still, Zappa’s free-wheeling, open-ended, eternally entertaining, and stylistically diverse world of “Anything Anytime Anyplace For No Reason AT All (AAAFNRAA)” offers a marked contrast to Benjamin’s painstakingly slow search for “the right notes.” The contrast is all the more striking when one compares the flood of music and recordings Zappa produced in his 53 years as opposed to Benjamin’s relatively compact catalogue of works. Opposites attract? We’ll have to ask. But it occurs to me that both Zappa and Benjamin, however different their musical personas, share an abhorrence of dogma and a commitment to trusting their ears. That is certainly what attracted them both to the music of Edgard Varèse, whose own small oeuvre of “right notes” defied all existing rules. Ears, like fingerprints, are unique to each individual, and this goes beyond questions of shape and contour. For the composer the ear guides the process by which personality, belief, and experience are translated into sound. This is a Festival of “right notes” chosen by a composer who trusts his ears and is not afraid to ask his audiences to trust their own.
- Christopher Hailey
Read the Program Notes here >>
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