"I'm usually really active," he says, "but I usually don't get hurt so much."

Injuries are the least of his concerns these days. His Carlsbad Music Festival, which McBane started four years ago, opened Monday in Los Angeles. The Carlsbad concerts begin this week. McBane has been increasingly peripatetic with regular commutes between Carlsbad and Los Angeles to tend to performance details.

The festival, in its fourth year, has increased from three concerts last year to four this year plus two outreach appearances. After the 2006 festival, it was his goal to launch events this year in Los Angeles.

"I lived in Los Angeles for eight years," McBane said. "It made sense to start the festival this year in Los Angeles considering so many of the musicians we've had in the past at the festival have been from there. A lot of my musical contacts are in L.A., and I thought it would be nice to perform all of this music up there."

With the Los Angeles concerts, McBane's career is coming full circle in a sense. He graduated from the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music in 2002. Since then he has made the list of young composers to watch by most major music critics. In July, he made the cover of the Los Angeles Times' Calendar magazine. Other recent major media recognition includes coverage by prominent blogger Kyle Gann and the L.A. Weekly.

On McBane's own Web site, he writes that the recent flurry of press attention is "flattering." Part of the cause of this attention may be due to the fact that McBane is not your usual classical musician. While his original compositions have been performed throughout the world, it's his founding of a festival in the arts-friendly city of Carlsbad that is seen as both adventurous and quixotic.

"I was writing the book and inventing the wheel as I was going along," he said about his first festival. "I didn't have any real experience in administration and I had to figure out how to do it."

McBane set out to create a festival that would "champion young composers and young ensembles." Described as cutting edge, the festival focuses on contemporary classical music. This year, the festival plays the fathers of minimalism, Steve Reich, Terry Riley and Phillip Glass, among other composers.

McBane, who now calls New York City home when he isn't in town seeing to festival-related duties, was born and reared in Carlsbad. His early influences came from seeing Itzhak Perlman on "Sesame Street" and at age 2 pretending newspaper racks in the family home were violins.

He picked up a real violin at age 3 but "didn't quite take to it right away. But I picked up again with it when I was 5," he recalled. McBane said that his parents didn't push the violin on him and that his involvement with music was his choice. His musical interests outside of classical may have been spurred by his fascination with new wave music.

"I was 5 or 6," he remembers. "I had a bunch of Oingo Boingo tapes and stuff like that. I've never been solely interested in classical music." In junior high, he dabbled with blues and rock guitar, eventually playing in garage bands. When he reached high school, he was playing in three different youth orchestras and in a chamber music group. It was also in high school where he first started composing and began studying music theory.

"A lot of young violinists are driven," he said. "They know they want to be professional violinists at a very early age. I wasn't really like that. I was just enjoying it. The summer before my senior year in high school, I went to Germany for music study and realized that this (music) was really fun and thought maybe this is something I want to study in college."

Living in New York for the past year, McBane has entrenched himself with the artistic scene there.

"One of the great things about New York is the community of like-minded composers and adventurous musicians. There could be a little bit of competition amongst everyone. But we all raise each other's standards, and people are coming up with new ideas, or you become inspired by something you hear."

Earlier this year, McBane created his newest artistic project, his own "indie-classical" band that he calls Build. McBane plays violin and composes all of the music. Build -- consisting of violin, cello, piano, bass and drums -- has already played gigs in New York. McBane hopes to tour the band after they complete an upcoming recording.

His other plans include projects involving dancers, producing more multimedia projects, doing film scoring and perhaps playing in an orchestra. Then there's the future of the Carlsbad Music Festival.

"I've been thinking about 2008," he said. "I have some ideas and ensembles in mind and different pieces I want to play. One of the things I want to do in the future is to do some programs that look at the history of California music. This is something I've explored a little bit. We've had several different pieces by California composers in the past."

Among those composers he mentions for further exploration are Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison. Both are considered mavericks of contemporary American music with deep California connections.

Carlsbad may consider McBane its own maverick. Other arts organizations are following McBane's lead in presenting classical music events in his hometown. Both the La Jolla Music Society and Mainly Mozart now have a consistent presence in the city.

For the fourth year, McBane has utilized his composing pen and written one of three world premieres the festival will offer. His untitled (as of press time) work will be played by Real Quiet.

"I like to think that some people in the audience are interested in what I'm doing that's new," McBane said. "There's several dozen people who come to the concerts every year. A lot of them are like old friends. They are people that I've met through the festival who are interested and excited about what I'm bringing each year."