Carlsbad Music Festival: This Weekend

This weekend is the Carlsbad Music Festival featuring alternative classical musicians. Events are below, full information if you 'keep on reading'.

C A R L S B A D M U S I C F E S T I V A L A T - A - G L A N C E

Friday, September 25 (8 pm)

California E.A.R. Unit

John Luther Adams: The Light Within* (world premiere of new arrangement)
Daniel Wohl: +ou- | Ryan Brown: Our Friend Adam
Matt McBane: Anchor | Keeril Makan: After Forgetting* (world premiere)
Yannis Kyrakides: Mnemonist S (with video)

*Commissioned by California E.A.R. Unit


Saturday, September 26 (2 pm)

Free lecture-demonstration with Fred Frith
Presented by the Museum of Making Music

Saturday, September 26 (8 pm)

Calder Quartet

Daniel Wohl: Glitch* (world premiere, 2009 Composers Competition Winner)
Charles Punchatz, Ted Hearne, and Jason Treuting: new works* (world premieres)
Leos Janacek: String Quartet No. 2

*Commissioned by Carlsbad Music Festival

Sunday, September 27 (2 pm)

Fred Frith plus Calder Quartet and California E.A.R. Unit
Works by Fred Frith (not in sequence):

Solo pieces (Frith), Lelekovice (Calder Quartet), Water Stories (E.A.R. Unit),
Cold (Calder Quartet + E.A.R. Unit),
Friendly Gestures (Frith, Calder Quartet, E.A.R. Unit, + CMF Composers-in-Residence)


The sixth annual Carlsbad Music Festival will be held September 25 – 27 (Friday through Sunday), comprising three concerts of the newest classical music, plus a free performance-demonstration. All events take place in Schulman Auditorium at the Dove Library in Carlsbad, California. This year, the renowned California E.A.R. Unit and composer/guitar hero Fred Frith join the festival lineup for the first time. Returning artists include the Calder Quartet, the festival’s Founding Ensemble-in-Residence, and composer/violinist Matt McBane, CMF’s Founder and Director. Tickets may be purchased at www.carlsbadmusicfestival.org; details are listed below.

CMF is Southern California’s alternative classical music festival, bringing an ever-changing roster of world-class musicians to the community to perform exciting new scores. This year’s programs include five world premieres, including four works commissioned by the festival. Friday’s opening concert by the California E.A.R. Unit includes the world premiere of Keeril Makan’s After Forgetting and the debut of a new arrangement of Alaskan composer John Luther Adams’s The Light Within. The program also features Matt McBane’s new work for the ensemble, Anchor.

As always, CMF spotlights emerging composers, many discovered by McBane and the Calder Quartet through CMF’s annual Composers Competition. This year’s winner, commissioned by CMF to write a major work for the Calder, is the 28-year-old, Paris-born/New York-based composer Daniel Wohl. Wohl’s 20-minute score Glitch will be premiered by the group on Saturday (Sept. 26), alongside new pieces by fellow composers-in-residence Charles Punchatz, Ted Hearne, and Jason Treuting.

Sunday’s concert brings all of the festival’s artists together for an unprecedented collaboration. In the triple role of composer, instrumentalist, and improviser, Fred Frith has recombined several of his multi-movement works into an uninterrupted span of music – alternately performing solo, with the Calder Quartet and E.A.R. Unit separately, and with all of the combined forces together (further assisted by the festival’s composers-in-residence).

Frith will also give a free performance-demonstration on Saturday (2 pm) at Schulman Auditorium, sharing his innovative techniques for playing the electric guitar, sometimes using household objects. This event is sponsored by Carlsbad’s Museum of Making Music.

Throughout the weekend, audiences will have frequent opportunities to meet the artists. Each Carlsbad concert will be preceded by a pre-concert talk (starting one hour prior), and followed by a catered reception with the artists, free to all audience members.

The Festival is co-presented by the City of Carlsbad’s Cultural Arts Office, with significant support from the Carlsbad Library and Arts Foundation’s Robert H. Gartner Cultural Endowment Fund.