CARLSBAD — From Grammy winners to a recent MacArthur Fellow, more than 20 artists and bands will be jamming throughout Carlsbad Village this weekend for the10th annual Carlsbad Music Festival Sept. 20 through Sept. 22.
[amt_override]“(The festival has) always been about musicians who are doing really cool things across genres,” said festival Director and Founder Matt McBane.
Local jazz guitarist Peter Sprague is among the artists performing in the festival this year.
“I have always heard about how adventurous and well-received the (festival) concerts have been, and I love the idea of whole community becoming a music spot,” he said.
Sprague said that with the emphasis on creativity with the concert, “We (the artists) sort of feel we have creative license to be a little bit wild.”
For his performances, he said he plans on bringing in his passion for Brazilian music and the Beatles, particularly in his own arrangement of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”
One of the event’s headliners is Roomful of Teeth, a group of classically trained singers who incorporate vocal techniques from around the world into a-cappella songs.
“We are trying to expand the pallet of the vocal ensemble,” explained Caroline Shaw, one of the group’s singers.
She said Roomful of Teeth strives to stretch the capabilities of the human voice and bring new sounds to audiences with its work.
“(Our work) sounds wile and sometimes it’s incredibly joyful, and sometimes it’s jarring,” she said.
The Carlsbad Music Festival is the first time the group will be performing on the West Coast.
“We are very proud to bring that (new music) to new audiences,” Shaw said.
This year’s festival is the biggest to date and will include more than 50 performances, most of which are free, at Magee Park, St. Michael’s Chapel, Carlsbad Village Theatre, and other nooks throughout the Village.
To raise funds, McBane and his team reached out to community members through Kickstarter and were able to raise more than $10,000.
For more information, visit carlsbadmusicfestival.org.
