A good-sized crowd showed up at Zipper last Friday and were well rewarded; this was the preview concert of the Carlsbad Festival, which actually ends up in Carlsbad this weekend (Friday and Saturday nights, Sunday afternoon). I like the Festival; the music is interesting and the planning is actually about something: young composers, or once-young composers, raising a bit of hell with standard definitions. It’s also a study in chutzpah: Matt McBane, USC grad, decently talented violinist and composer, heads off to New York, organizes a group to play his own music, pushes his way into clubs and arts venues, lands a recording with an upcoming label (New Amsterdam) produces a disc with an irresistibly pretty cover that surely helps get playings (the music is nice, too), comes back to his home town (Carlsbad-by-the-Sea) where his family and all their friends help start a Festival, with his sister handling the p-r even. I went down to the Festival last year, and it was great to see all the Carlsbad townfolks sitting still and admiringly while native-son Matt plied them with some fairly hard-core new music. Maybe that’s what it takes.

His group is called BUILD, and their disc is on New Amsterdam, a new label. The group has Matt, two other string players, a piano and drums, and I do like their music even if I’m not sure what it is. It’s a kind of indie-rock chamber music, nice open textures, nothing too long, everything nicely shaped, or BUILT if you prefer. The rest of Carlsbad includes the UC-San Diego percussion group, and their program on Saturday night includes John Cage’s madcap “Third Construction” which is one of modern music’s ancestral pieces (and a hoot, besides). Sunday afternoon’s program has John Schneider with the Harry Partch instruments, playing Partch and Lou Harrison. Anybody driving?