A concert today at the Zipper Hall in Los Angeles will provide an introduction to the eclectic offerings of the 5-year-old Carlsbad Music Festival.

"This year we actually have four groups that are performing in the festival in general. At that concert we have three of the groups performing. ... And it's like a longer concert, like a 2 ½ -hour concert with those three groups playing," said Matt McBane, the festival's founder and director.

"It's kind of like a showcase of what we're doing down in Carlsbad. In Carlsbad we have five concerts. So it's kind of condensing all of those five concerts into one," he said in a telephone interview.

The festival consists mainly of classical chamber music.

"There have been some pieces with video that are like multimedia media kind of pieces that we've done in the past and we're doing one this year as well. But the format that it's presented in is a chamber-music format, but it's all adventurous chamber music," McBane said.

McBane, a violinist and composer, is also the leader of the Brooklyn-based band Build, which will be performing at the festival for the first time this year, including the Los Angeles concert.

He described Build, which recently released a self-titled album, as an indie-classical band. He said it is a mix of a lot of things, mainly chamber music and art rock. As examples of art rock, he cited the British band Radiohead, the Icelandic band Sigurros and the American singer/songwriter Beck.

The other performers featured in the festival are the Calder Quartet, which has been the festival's ensemble in residence since its inception; Red Fish Blue Fish, the resident percussion ensemble of UC San Diego; and Partch, which specializes in the music of Harry Partch, a 20th-century American composer.

The Calder Quartet is rooted in the classics such as Beethoven and Bartok, McBane said. "But then they also have an adventurous side to their programming. Their usual programs will be a juxtaposition of modern works with the classics of the string-quartet repertoire."

Diversity is the audience's main feature, he said.

"The audience that we get is all ages. And there are some people that are real aficionados and there are some people that are just along for the ride and checking out something different."

McBane, who lives in New York, grew up in Carlsbad and his parents still live there.

This is the second year the festival has started in Los Angeles. Last year, several of the people who went to the Los Angeles concert went to Carlsbad for all the concerts, McBane said.

"That's not a bad way to spend a weekend down here in Carlsbad by the beach," he said. "It's a nice time of year for that, and then going to a whole bunch of concerts in a weekend."