Mark Morris is set to unleash a winsome welter of events at this year's Ojai Festival, including the Bad Plus Rite (Ethan Iverson writes in advance here), a Lou Harrison gamelan program, the staggering new Morris dance Jenn and Spencer (to Henry Cowell), various works of John Luther Adams (Strange and Sacred Noise, songbirdsongs, For Lou Harrison), and a cache of Cage.... Adams will then proceed north for the world première of his big new orchestral piece Become Ocean, at the Seattle Symphony, June 20-23. This work is an outgrowth of Dark Waves.... The splashiest undertaking at this year's Make Music NY is a performance of R. Murray Schafer's Credo on Central Park Lake, with 144 singers under the direction of George Steele. Note also Cornelius Cardew's The Great Learning, Melissa Elledge's all-accordion In C, and a five-borough rendition of Cage's 49 Waltzes. The full schedule is here.... The eighteen-year-old Conrad Tao is a talent to watch, both as pianist and composer, as Voyages, his spiky debut EMI album, attests. Next week he is curating a three-day festival called Unplay, with his own works programmed alongside those of Tristan Perich, Phil Kline, Kate Davis, Julia Wolfe, and the like.... The Chelsea Music Festival also gets under way next week, with a focus on Britten; I'm especially intrigued by an Ensemble Amarcord program called The Ghost of Gesualdo.... Big early-music doings in June: the Boston Early Music Festival (June 9-16) will have a full staging of Handel's Almira; and the Festival Montréal Baroque (June 21-24) will feature the Ensemble Caprice in what may prove to be a controversial reconstruction of Vivaldi's Motezuma.... The full schedule for this year's Bang on a Can Marathon, on June 16, has been announced. David Lang's death speaks, with Shara Worden, is one highlight.... Martin Bresnick's first opera, My Friend's Story, has its premiere in New Haven on June 19.... The singular Laurie Anderson is curating a series of events at the River to River Festival, June 18-22.
