This year’s programs include five world premieres, including four works commissioned by the festival. The opening concert by the California E.A.R. Unit, one of the nation’s leading ensembles for contemporary repertoire, includes the world premiere of Keeril Makan’s After Forgetting, the debut of a new arrangement of Alaskan composer John Luther Adams’s The Light Within and Matt McBane’s new work for the E.A.R. quintet, Anchor. 

As always, Carlsbad Music Festival (CMF) spotlights emerging composers 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 whose 20-minute score Glitch will be premiered by the group alongside new pieces by fellow composers-in-residence Charles Punchatz, Ted Hearne and Jason Treuting.

Music demonstration at 2 p.m.
Free
Fred Frith will give a performance demonstration in the Schulman Auditorium, sharing his innovative techniques for playing the electric guitar, sometimes using household objects. This event is sponsored by the Museum of Making Music.

Fred Frith, composer, improviser and multi-instrumentalist, has situated himself for more than thirty years in the area where rock music and new music meet. This concert brings all of the festival’s artists together for an unprecedented collaboration. Frith has recombined several of his multi-movement works into an uninterrupted span of music--alternately performing solo, with the Calder Quartet and California E.A.R. Unit separately, and with all of the combined forces together (further assisted by the festival’s composers-in-residence).