Artist Profiles

Michi Wiancko violin

Michi Wiancko is a versatile and highly imaginative composer, violinist, and collaborator, whose multifaceted creative projects and organizational work prioritize artistic discovery, as well as community resilience and social change. Recent chamber music commissions include works for Boston Chamber Music Society, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, Schubert Club, Accordo, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, East Coast Chamber Orchestra, Anne Akiko Meyers, Ecstatic Music Festival, Aizuri Quartet, Parker Quartet, Friction Quartet, and the Jupiter Quartet, to name a few. She has composed three operas: Murasaki’s Moon (2019), commissioned by Met Live Arts, Onsite opera, and American Lyric Theater; Arkana Aquarium (2021), commissioned by Experiments in Opera; and The Stream (2022) commissioned by Baldwin Wallace and the Cleveland Lyric Theater. Wiancko has also composed music for short and feature-length films, commercials, and for her own band, Kono Michi.

A passionate collaborator, she has been fortunate to work and tour with renowned artists from across a vast musical spectrum: Gabriela Lena Frank, Missy Mazzoli, PaviElle French, Vijay Iyer, Steve Reich, Emily Wells, Laurie Anderson, William Brittelle, Kaoru Watanabe, Qasim Naqvi, Mark Dancigers, Satoshi Takeishi, Mazz Swift, Sandeep Das, Jessie Montgomery, Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma, Matt Berninger, Dolio the Sleuth, and Rench. A member of Silkroad Ensemble and the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, she has also performed with The Knights, A Far Cry, Mark Morris Dance Group, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Alarm Will Sound, and International Contemporary Ensemble. Described by Gramophone Magazine as an “alluring soloist with heightened expressive and violinistic gifts,” Wiancko made her violin solo debuts with the New York Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, performed her recital debut in Weill Hall, and released a solo album of new works on New Amsterdam called Planetary Candidate, as well as an album of the complete violin solo works of Émile Sauret on Naxos.

A native of California, she holds degrees from CIM and Juilliard, where she studied with Donald Weilerstein and the late Robert Mann, respectively. In addition to her composition and performing career, Michi Wiancko is director and curator of Antenna Cloud Farm, a music festival, arts retreat, and community organization based in western Massachusetts.

Wu Man pipa

Wu Man belongs to a rare group of musicians who have redefined the role of their instruments, in her case, the pipa — a pear-shaped, fourstringed Chinese lute with a rich history spanning centuries. She is celebrated as one of the most prominent instrumentalists of traditional Chinese music, as well as a composer and educator. She has premiered hundreds of new works for the pipa and has performed in recital and with major orchestras around the world. She is a frequent collaborator with ensembles such as the Kronos and Shanghai Quartets and The Knights and is a founding member of the Silkroad Ensemble. She has appeared on more than 40 recordings, including the Silkroad Ensemble’s Grammy-winning recording Sing Me Home, featuring her composition “Green (Vincent’s Tune).” She is also a featured artist in the 2015 Emmy Award–winning documentary The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble. In the 2023–24 season, Wu Man premieres a new Pipa Concerto by Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Du Yun with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and later with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. She returns to Carnegie Hall for performances with the Kronos Quartet and The Knights.

Born in Hangzhou, China, Wu Man studied at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, where she became the first recipient of a master’s degree in pipa. At age 13, she was recognized as a child prodigy and a national role model for young pipa players. Wu is a recipient of the 2023 National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA), one of the United States’ most prestigious honors in folk and traditional arts. In 2023 she was additionally honored with the Asia Society’s Asia Arts Game Changers Award, an annual award presented in New York City honoring artists and arts professionals for their significant contributions to contemporary art. She is a visiting professor at her alma mater, the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing; and a distinguished professor at the Zhejiang and the Xi’an Conservatories. In 2021 she received an honorary doctorate of music from the New England Conservatory of Music. She has also served as artistic director of the Xi’an Silk Road Music Festival at the Xi’an Conservatory.

Ara Guzelimian

Artistic and Executive Director

Ara Guzelimian is Artistic and Executive Director of the Ojai Music Festival, beginning in that position in July 2020. The appointment culminates many years of association with the Festival including tenures as director of the Ojai Talks at the Festival and as Artistic Director 1992–97. Guzelimian stepped down as provost and dean of The Juilliard School in New York City in June 2020, having served in that position since 2007. At Juilliard, he worked closely with the president in overseeing the faculty, curriculum, and artistic planning of the distinguished performing arts conservatory in all three of its divisions: dance, drama, and music. He continues at Juilliard as special advisor to the office of the president.

Prior to the Juilliard appointment, he was senior director and artistic advisor of Carnegie Hall from 1998 to 2006. Guzelimian currently serves as artistic consultant for the Marlboro Music Festival and School in Vermont. He is a member of the steering committee of the Aga Khan Music Awards, the artistic committee of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust in London, and a board member of the Amphion and Pacific Harmony foundations. He is also a member of the Music Visiting Committee of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.

THOMAS MAY Program Book Annotator

Thomas May is a freelance writer, critic, educator, and translator whose work appears in an array of international publications, including the New York Times, Gramophone, and the program books of Pierre-Boulez Saal in Berlin. The English-language editor for Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, he also writes for such institutions as the Hong Kong Arts Festival, Edinburgh Festival, Davos Festival, Metropolitan Opera, and The Juilliard School. He has translated collections of essays on Toshio Hosokawa, Olga Neuwirth, Thomas Pintscher, and Rebecca Saunders for the Roche Commissions series as well as Protest: The Aesthetics of Resistance, published by the Zurich University of the Arts. His books include Decoding Wagner and The John Adams Reader: Writings on an American Composer (both published by Amadeus Press). He blogs at memeteria.com.

JOHN SCHAEFER Ojai Talks Host

John Schaefer is the host and producer of WNYC’s long-running new music show New Sounds (“The #1 radio show for the Global Village” – Billboard), founded in 1982, and its innovative Soundcheck podcast, which has featured live performances and interviews with a variety of guests since 2002. He created the New Sounds Live concert series in 1986, which features new works, commissioned pieces, and a special series devoted to live music for silent films. Produced largely at Brookfield Place and Merkin Concert Hall in NY, the series continues to this day.

Schaefer has written extensively about music, including the book New Sounds: A Listener’s Guide to New Music (Harper & Row, NY, 1987; Virgin Books, London, 1990); the Cambridge Companion to Singing: World Music (Cambridge University Press, U.K., 2000); and the TV program Bravo Profile: Bobby McFerrin (Bravo Television, 2003). He has also written about horse racing (Bloodlines: A Horse Racing Anthology, Vintage, NY 2006), hosted panels for the World Science Festival, and been a regular panelist on the BBC’s soccer-based program Sports World