06/11/2026
This weekend, the Ojai Music Festival celebrates its 80th anniversary, featuring Esa-Pekka Salonen as Music Director. The Festival has a rich legacy as one of the world’s most adventurous laboratories for contemporary and classical music. Operating under a unique model where a new Music Director is appointed annually, the festival has consistently drawn the avant-garde, the iconic, and the boundary-pushing to the Libbey Bowl.
That history includes legends and iconoclasts including Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Pierre Boulez, John Adams, Peter Sellars, and Michael Tilson Thomas –who passed away earlier this year.
MTT, as Michael Tilson Thomas is known in the classical music world, has one of the most enduring and transformative legacies in the history of the Ojai Music Festival. Over nearly three decades, he served as Music Director or co-Music Director a remarkable seven times, profoundly shaping the festival’s identity as a laboratory for the musical avant-garde.
Shortly before his passing, Michael Tilson Thomas gifted the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts a large charger by Beatrice Wood, featuring a beautiful luster glaze.
This weekend, the Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts celebrates the Ojai Music Festival and Michael Tilson Thomas’ beautiful gift for the Center’s Permanent Collection.