“one of the area's most innovative music showcases”
"Founded and nimbly run by young composer-violinist Matt McBane, the festival provides a fresh West Coast forum for new music, commissioned, performed and served up with seriousness as well as audience accessibility.”
“…magnificently enlightening…”
“Carlsbad exemplifies the way a young generation of composers rethink accepted musical pigeonholes—classical versus pop, chamber versus orchestral, harmony versus noise—that fogeys like me once held sacred."
- Alan Rich
Cutting-edge fare at Carlsbad Music Festival
The sixth annual Carlsbad Music Festival, which takes place Wednesday through next Sunday, will offer some tantalizing aural treats for fans with a craving for contemporary classical and improvised music that goes well beyond the cutting edge.
On Friday at 8 p.m., the California E.A.R. Unit will perform six pieces by as many composers, including 29-year-old maverick Matt McBane and 28-year-old Daniel Wohl, in Schulman Auditorium at Carlsbad's Dove Library. (The auditorium will be the site of all the festival's concerts except for a Wednesday “satellite” show at Zipper Hall in Los Angeles by McBane, the E.A.R. Unit and the Calder Quartet.)
On Saturday at 2 p.m., acclaimed English guitarist and genre-leaping composer Fred Frith will demonstrate and talk about his prepared guitar techniques. Frith returns next Sunday at 2 p.m. for a concert of his works with the E.A.R. Unit and the Calder Quartet, the latter of which will perform three world premieres as part of its Saturday night concert.
Frith's lecture/demonstration, which is presented by Carlsbad's Museum of Making Music, is free. Tickets for each of the three all-ages concerts are priced at $8 for students, $15 for general admission and $25 for priority seating.
