Ojai Music Festival: Matthew Aucoin's Family Dinner

Featuring Matthew Aucoin, Paul Appleby, Davóne Tines, Conor Hanick, Coleman Itzkoff, Keir GoGwilt, Doug Balliett, Jonny Allen, Emi Ferguson, Miranda Cuckson, Julia Bullock, Julia Eichten, Carrie Frey, Gleb Kanasevich, and Mari Yoshinaga

Andrew MACINTOSH   Little Jimmy Matthew AUCOIN  Family Dinner  World Premiere

This program features the first Ojai Festival performance of music by Andrew McIntosh, one of Southern California’s most vital and distinctive musical voices. Pianists Conor Hanick and Matthew Aucoin and percussionists Jonny Allen and Mari Yoshinaga will perform McIntosh’s Little Jimmy, a 30-minute work inspired by a visit the composer made to a backpackers’ camp called Little Jimmy, located on Mt. Islip in the Angeles National Forest.

A cycle of mini-concertos commissioned by the Ojai Festival, Family Dinner aims to capture the raucous, joyful energy of a multi-course dinner with beloved friends. The music ranges from introspective to riotously dancelike; it is also punctuated by spoken “toasts” composed by writers and thinkers who are collaborators of AMOC’s artists.