“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
Seventh Annual Composers Competition Announcement
The Carlsbad Music Festival, in partnership with its Founding Ensemble-in-Residence, the Calder Quartet, announces its seventh annual composition competition with a prize of $3,000. The Festival and Quartet seek to commission a new string quartet from a highly original, creative, and compelling composer age 35 or under at the time of application (born after 12/9/1975). The winning composition will be premiered at the 9th annual Carlsbad Music Festival in September 2012. Full information can be found on our Competition page
Support the Festival!
Please consider a tax-deductible donation of any size to help us continue to bring this amazing Festival to Carlsbad each year. Your donation is especially important now as we begin to plan for next year’s 9th Annual Carlsbad Music Festival – help us keep the Festival spirit alive throughout the year!
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NEA Artworks and AMC Recording Grant!
The NEA Artworks grant is a prestigious national grant that we were thrilled to be awarded our first time applying. Funds from the grant will go towards expanding the Fest for 2012.
The Calder Quartet was awarded the AMC Recording Grant for 5 works by young composers commissioned by or premiered at the Fest: Honey Flyers by Christine Southworth, Glitch by Daniel Wohl, Interface by Tristan Perich, Skrzyp Skrzyn by Nathan Davis, and grip by Ryan Carter. 3 of these works were commissioned by the Fest through our annual Composers Competition whose deadline is approaching (see above). We are very excited to help bring these works birthed at the Fest to the wider world through recordings.
Festival Wrap
The 2011 Carlsbad Music Festival in September was a tremendous success! It began Friday night with the percussion of red fish blue fish at the Carlsbad Train Station and ended on Sunday with a haunting solo viola at the conclusion of the Calder Quartet's world premiere performance of bad black bottom kind, the commissioned string quartet by our Composers Competition winner Jacob Cooper.
In between, we experienced artists creating new worlds of musical possibility by mixing up sounds from European classical, African dance, and American indie music. We heard new compositions by composers-in-residence Sarah Kirkland Snider, Florent Ghys and Matt McBane and Shara Worden, and heard performances by My Brightest Diamond, Build, Vicky Chow, Burkina Electric and Mando Basso, all while enjoying the beautiful Village of Carlsbad.
In addition to the raves of the Festival-goers, the Fest got great reviews in the press. Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times said the Fest "is making a significant statement. It reminds me of what the Ojai Festival was before it became famous." James Chute of the San Diego Union Tribune praised Jonathan Moerschel's solo viola performance: "you could go a lifetime and never hear a more expressive, certain account” of the works he played.
*a quote from one of our fans!
