Performing at Friday evening's Village Music Walk

red fish blue fish is the resident percussion group of the University of California, San Diego. Comprised of current masters and doctoral music students in UCSD's world-renowned contemporary music degree program, the group performs, records, and premieres experimental percussion repertoire under the artistic direction of Steven Schick. The group has performed in Paris, Taipei, New York City, Washington DC, and Los Angeles at festivals such as the Bang on a Can Marathon, June in Buffalo, Green Umbrella Series, PASIC, and the Roots and Rhizomes percussion conference which was founded by rfbf alumni. The group commissions and works closely with a number of prominent living composers from Europe, Australia, South America, and North America including Roger Reynolds, Philippe Manoury, John Luther Adams, and many others. red fish blue fish's release of Xenakis's percussion works on Mode Records has received wide critical acclaim. The group will release recordings featuring works by Reynolds, Cage, Scelsi, and Stockhausen in 2010 and 2011. In the coming season, the group will give concerts in UCSD's new Conrad Prebys Music Center in La Jolla, as well as the NYC Armory's Tune-in Festival in February. red fish blue fish and its members have performed regularly at the Carlsbad Music Festival since its early days.

Amsterdam-based Australian composer, Kate Moore was selected as the winner of the 2010 Carlsbad Music Festival Composers Competition out of nearly 100 applicants worldwide and awarded a commission. The resulting piece is her epic, eveloping string quartet installation, Skeletons and Violins. The piece involves a live performance by the Calder Quartet along with three pre-recorded versions of the quartet surrounding the audience on all sides. The audience will be immersed in a cloud of sound that is at times meditative, at times intensely physical building to massive crescendos, and throughout tinged with Kate’s unique emotional language.

Skeletons and Violins is a co-commission with ArtPower! @ UCSD, and will be given its world premiere by the Calder Quartet in their Saturday, September 25 concert.

LISTEN to Kate's piano piece Sensitive Spot

Nathan Davis is a New York-based composer and percussionist. His compositions often have a fascination with and revelry in sound that are heavily rooted in his experience as a percussionist. From the other-worldly opening of his CMF co-commissioned string quartet Skrzyp Skrzyn to his percussion piece for solo triangle, Diving Bell, Nathan’s music often focuses in on an acoustic phenomenon and then amplifies and/or processes it on his computer to bring it alive for the audience.

Nathan’s Skrzyp Skrzyn will be given its West coast premiere by the Calder Quartet on their Saturday, September 25 concert and he will play a solo set of his percussion music at the Village Music Walk on Friday, September 24. Skrzyp Skrzyn was co-commissioned by Carlsbad Music Festival and the MATA Festival in New York.

Caroline Mallonée is among the most sought-after composers of her generation. Her work has been performed in New York City at Symphony Space, Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center, Tenri Cultural Center, and Tonic, as well as at the Tribeca New Music Festival, Long Leaf Opera Festival, Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, Chapel Hill Arts Festival, Durham Downtown Music Festival, on the New Music New Haven series and at Boston’s Jordan Hall. Her music has been performed in the U.S., the Netherlands, Wales, England, Iceland, Italy and Mexico, and has been broadcast several times over National Public Radio on Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion.” Several of her choral pieces, including The Carolers At My Door, are published by Boosey & Hawkes.

Carlsbad born and raised, Brooklyn-based Matt McBane is the Founder and Director of the Carlsbad Music Festival. He has been described as “a natural composer, a fresh voice and, from the evidence of his festival, a first-rate organizer with a broad range of musical interests” by Mark Swed in the Los Angeles Times and as having “a fantastic intuitive sense that is backed up by a serious amount of compositional craft” by Sequenza21. His music is rooted in his classical training as a composer and violinist, and is deeply influenced by minimalism, art rock, modal jazz and many other genres.

His 2003 piano piece, Plus Minus, (which Matt played for himself but never publicly) will be given its official world premiere by Eric Huebner on his Saturday, September 25 concert. He will also be playing on some of his violin duets at the Village Music Walk on Friday, September 24.