A guide to the California Festival in San Diego

Jump to the San Diego concert listings.

A state-wide festival of new music kicks off this week, and the numbers are impressive: 100 performing arts organizations, 140 composers and 180 new compositions.

And then there's a small number: 5. The California Festival: A Celebration of New Music spotlights music composed within the last five years — with a slight twist.

"The California Festival really has been created to showcase the innovation and creativity of California with a light to its musical organizations," said Martha Gilmer, CEO of the San Diego Symphony. "And innovation has been happening in the state for decades. So while it focuses on music written in the last five years, that music is paired with music that was groundbreaking for its time."

An example: Strauss' highly-recognizable "Also sprach Zarathustra," which was considered new and unusual at the time, in part for being based on a philosophy book. Catch it Nov. 4 at the Rady Shell.

The California Festival, which runs Nov. 3-19, is the brainchild of three influential conductors: Rafael Payare of the San Diego Symphony, Gustavo Dudamel of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Esa-Pekka Salonen of the San Francisco Symphony.

Courtesy of the San Diego Symphony

"This was something that was pretty much in the air and it was wonderful to just sit down and share it with the world," said Rafael Payare in a February interview with KPBS, shortly after the California Festival was announced. "Because Esa-Pekka being in San Francisco, Gustavo being in LA and me being in San Diego — the way that we program and the way that we approach music is quite similar, but at the same time the audience in the whole California, it has this ability, this amazing wonderful sense of welcoming and not being afraid to explore different things. So this is also something that we could actually showcase."

For Gilmer, contemporary music — like all music — is a lens into the time and place in which it was written.

"It's always hard to predict how people in the future will look at our current times. I think that a lot of music that's written today is reflective of the human experience of today. So, you know, climate concerns. Issues of justice. Issues of the joy of nature. Music has always reflected the time in which it was created. But I think that there's a direct connection with composers writing about the world we live in, and I do think that will echo for years to come," Gilmer said.

Featured composers in San Diego include Carlos Simon, Jessie Montgomery, Billy Childs, Texu Kim, Saunder Choi, Francisco Eme, Steph Richards, Gabriela Lena Frank and many more.

An example: Carlos Simon's "Wake Up," commissioned by the San Diego Symphony. This work was performed by the symphony last month and is powerful, gorgeous and inventive — and its unique, site-specific instrumentation includes pieces of scrap metal from the Jacobs Music Center construction zone. Catch it again Nov. 10-11 at the Rady Shell.

Terrance Ragland

The San Diego Symphony has five official concert programs involving their orchestra during the festival, plus a pre-festival performance at Mexico's Centro Cultural Tijuana (CECUT) concert hall across the border. Through mid-November, about two dozen festival concerts will take place in San Diego, from local arts organizations ranging from the experimental like Project [BLANK] and San Diego New Music, to chamber groups like Art of Elan, Hausmann Quartet and Camarada, to established larger groups and orgs like San Diego Master Chorale, San Diego Jewish Men's Choir, San Diego Youth Symphony, Mainly Mozart, La Jolla Music Society, the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus and more.

More numbers: In addition to the San Diego Symphony, San Francisco Symphony and LA Philharmonic, close to a hundred smaller performing arts organizations will also participate — spotlighting more than 80 venues throughout the state

The San Diego Symphony had hoped the festival would take place in their indoor home, the historic Jacobs Music Center, which has been undergoing extensive renovations. Earlier this summer, however, symphony leadership announced that the opening would be delayed until sometime in 2024. All San Diego Symphony performances for the California Festival have been moved to the Rady Shell.

The upside? Gilmer said the larger, outdoor venue allows them to open the festival to potentially thousands more people, including a free community and family day on Sunday, Nov. 5, and the giant puppet Little Amal's venture across the U.S. and Mexico when she passes through the Shell at 6:30 p.m. on Friday Nov. 3.

Sunday's free family day, which runs from noon to 6 p.m., includes preview performances from the San Diego Symphony (including work by composer Jessie Montgomery and more), the San Diego Youth Symphony, San Diego Master Chorale (including work by Saunder Choi and more) and Art of Elan. RSVPs are recommended, and guests can come for as much or as little as the event as they'd like.