Composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen returns to the Ojai Music Festival to serve as Music Director for the 80th Festival, June 11 to 14, 2026. Since the late 1940s, the Festival has continued the tradition of appointing a new Music Director each year, fostering vitality and diversity in its programming throughout the years.
Salonen previously collaborated with the Ojai Music Festival as Music Director for the 1999 and 2001 Festivals. He is now the Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony and the Conductor Laureate for the Philharmonia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. As a member of the faculty of the Colburn School, he directs the pre-professional Negaunee Conducting Program. Salonen co-founded, and until 2018 served as the Artistic Director of the annual Baltic Sea Festival.
“Esa-Pekka Salonen is one of the most inventive, adventurous thinkers of 21st-century musical life. 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,”
- Artistic and Executive Director Ara Guzelimian.
Find out more about the festival and Salonen's appointment here.
