Dawn Upshaw with Australian Chamber Orchestra (photo by Timothy Norris) (Ventura County Star)

The reviews are in from this year’s Ojai Music Festival, and most are quite positive overall.  Music director Dawn Upshaw not surprisingly got most of the praise, with the rest of this year’s guests — Richard Tongetti & the Australian Chamber Orchestra, red fish blue fish, Maria Schneider & her orchestra, among many others — getting their fair share of kudos.  As Rita Moran wrote in the Ventura County Star, “Is this year’s Ojai Music Festival music director Dawn Upshaw the luckiest person in the world because she has so many multitalented collaborative friends, or are the friends the luckiest because they have Upshaw to urge them on in rewarding directions?”

For the details . . .

• Mark Swed wrote two reviews in the Los Angeles Times, one on Friday and the other on Sunday
• Rita Moran in the Ventura County Star HERE
• Charles Donelan in the Santa Barbara Independent HERE
• Brian in Out West Arts also posted two reviews HERE
• Diane Sippl in kinocaviar.com HERE
• Tim Mangan has yet to post his reviews, but we know he was there based on his blog posts
• UPDATE: Tim Mangan said it was “a so-so Ojai Festival as Ojai Festivals go, a little soft around the middle perhaps, but still an enchanting thing, and over too soon.”  Read his full review for Musical America HERE.