The Carlsbad Music Festival, in partnership with ArtPower! at UC San Diego and the Calder Quartet, is thrilled to announce the selection of Andy Akiho as the winner of the 2012 Carlsbad Music Festival Composers Competition. He was selected amongst 203 applicant composers from 22 different countries, with representation from Europe, Asia and Latin America, including Mexico, Columbia, Denmark, Greece, South Korea and Japan.
 

Described as “mold-breaking” and “vital” by The New York Times, Andy Akiho is an eclectic composer and performer whose interests run from steel pan to traditional classical music. Akiho came to composition through the steel pan (an instrument which originated in Trinidad) and has since gone on to study composition at Manhattan School of Music, Yale School of Music and Princeton University where he is currently a doctoral fellow. Recent highlights include winning the Finale Eighth Blackbird Composers Competition in December 2011, a commission from the New York Philharmonic for a premiere on its December 2012 Contact! series concert, and the release of his debut CD "No One the Know One" on the Innova label in the spring of 2011. Akiho also frequently performs his own music on the steel pan as he will on May 8, 2012 on the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella concert at Disney Hall.
 

The Carlsbad Music Festival is made possible by the tax-deductible contributions of people like you who support adventurous music and want to see it thrive in Carlsbad. With the growth in the size and scope of the Festival this year (7 concerts versus 3 last year plus the Music Walk), our expenses have outpaced our contributions, so we need your support!

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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On Friday, November 18, two exciting new grants were announced: the NEA Artworks Grant and the American Music Center CAP 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.

"It was all like a dream, and I didn't want to wake up!*"

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!