California’s Ojai Music Festival 2026 Names Music Director 

The Finnish conductor and composer Esa-Pekka Salonen will join the festival as it returns to Libbey Bowl from June 11–14, 2026

Founded in 1947, the Ojai Music Festival offers in-person and online programming, plus outreach initiatives for public-school students and seniors. 

Maintaining its tradition of appointing a new Music Director each year to foster fresh approaches to programming and leadership, the Festival has appointed Esa-Pekka Salonen as its 2026 Music Director; Salonen previously collaborated with the Festival in the same role for its editions in 1999 and 2001. 

More details about Salonen’s programming of the festival will be released prior to the 79th Festival from June 5–8, 2025, led by Music Director Claire Chase. 

Salonen is currently the Music Director of the San Francisco Symphony and the Conductor Laureate for the Philharmonia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. 

Additionally, he is a faculty member of the Colburn School, where he directs the pre-professional Negaunee Conducting Program. Until 2018, he served as the Artistic Director of the annual Baltic Sea Festival, of which he is co-founder. 

His upcoming season highlights include leading the San Francisco Symphony in world premieres of works by Nico Muhly, Xavier Muzik, and Gabriella Smith. As a composer, his works are programmed with 13 different orchestras this season. 

Salonen’s extensive discography includes the GRAMMY Award-winning world premiere recording of Saariaho’s opera Adriana Mater, Strauss’s Four Last Songs, and a 2018 box set of his own complete Sony recordings. His compositions have appeared on the Sony and Deutsche Grammophon labels, and his concertos for piano, violin, and cello are all featured in recordings with him as the conductor.

“Esa-Pekka Salonen is one of the most inventive, adventurous thinkers of 21st-century musical life,” said Ojai Fesitval’s Artistic and Executive Director, Ara Guzelimian. “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.”