The music director of the 80th Ojai Music Festival will be a familiar figure to classical concertgoers in both Northern and Southern California: Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Salonen, who is in his final season as music director of the San Francisco Symphony following a dispute with the orchestra’s board of directors, will program and lead the annual new-music festival in June 2026. He’s curated Ojai twice before, but it’s been a while — he served as music director for the 1999 and 2001 festivals.
As previously announced, the director of the 2025 festival, scheduled for June 5–8, will be flutist Claire Chase. Pianist Mitsuko Uchida assumed the role in 2024. The Ojai Music Festival, held each year in the mountains of Ventura County, is one of the nation’s most prestigious events celebrating contemporary classical music.
“Esa-Pekka Salonen is one of the most inventive, adventurous thinkers of 21st-century musical life,” said Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian in announcing the 2026 festival. “The unique format of the Ojai Music Festival gives him an unusually free creative hand as both composer and conductor. I’m thrilled at the prospect of all that he will dream up.”
According to the festival, Salonen’s compositions have been programmed by 13 orchestras this season, including the Chicago Symphony, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Munich Philharmonic. His major works include the 1997 orchestral piece L.A. Variations and concertos for violin, cello, and piano.
Salonen has also championed fellow contemporary composers, including John Adams, Samuel Adams, Anna Clyne, John Corigliano, Bryce Dessner, Magnus Lindberg, and Nico Muhly.
The chair of the conducting program at the Colburn School, Salonen was music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1992 to 2009 and assumed that same role with the San Francisco Symphony in 2020.
In March 2024, he announced he would not extend his initial five-year contract with the latter orchestra. “I have decided not to continue as music director of the San Francisco Symphony because I do not share the same goals for the future of the institution as the Board of Governors does,” he said in a statement.
