Next month's fifth annual Carlsbad Music Festival will extend from that North County coastal city down to San Diego and up to Los Angeles.

A showcase for cutting-edge music performers and composers, this year's edition begins Sept. 19 with a “minimarathon” concert at Los Angeles' Zipper Hall at the Colburn School of Music. A Sept. 25 concert at The Loft at UCSD is only open to UCSD students; all other concerts are open to the public.

Three of the featured artists at The Loft – Tristan Perich, Christine Southworth and festival founder Matt McBane – will also perform at the L.A. concert, where they'll be joined by UCSD composers Jeffrey Trevino and Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, along with the the ensembles Red Fish Blue Fish and The Calder Quartet.

Carlsbad's Schulman Auditorium at the Dove Library will host festival concerts Sept. 22 and Sept. 26-28. The Sept. 27 and 28 concerts will focus on the music of iconoclastic composer Harry Partch, who lived his final years in San Diego. Partch, who rebelled against what he called “the tyranny of the piano,” is best known for devising a 43-tone musical scale and building unique instruments – with such exotic names as the Chromelodeon and Quadrangularis Reversurn – up to the challenge.

The Partch tributes will be performed by a Los Angeles ensemble that calls itself Partch. Other festival artists include Bane's Brooklyn-based ensemble, Build, which fuses chamber music, art-rock, electronica, jazz and more.

Information/schedule: carlsbadmusicfestival.org or (760) 809-5501.

– GEORGE VARGA