Writers' Block

"I was inspired by Bang on a Can," says McBane. "They started about the same age as I did, and that's been going on for 10 years now. I thought I'd take a crack at it. For the most part, it's all next-generation composers and performers doing something new and fresh, with classical music being a part of it but mostly exploring new music."

The festival has been modest -- usually running over a single weekend. But it's become stable enough so that McBane can run it from New York, where he moved recently and formed an ensemble, Build -- a violin, cello, piano, bass and drums quintet, dedicated to his indie-classical music. This year, it has even added a Sept. 24 concert at Zipper Hall in Los Angeles prior to the Sept. 28-30 weekend in Carlsbad.

Still, like all his peers, McBane has had to find other ways to keep body and soul together. He's taught and conducted, and as a violinist, he can get paying gigs. The problem with that is that he's got to make time to practice.

"It's tricky," he says. "It's not like I have several assistants. I just have to block off time -- my writing month; another month to work on administrative stuff. Then I'm trying to get in practicing every day. It's a pretty risky profession. I'm not living off commissions."

At 37, Robert Voisey may seem to fall outside the "young composer" category, but in fact he came to composing late, after first majoring in math and computer science at Stony Brook University in New York. There he met Israeli composer Oded Zehavi and, inspired to try his hand at music-making himself, followed Zehavi to Israel, where he studied with him for two years.

When he came back to New York in 1994, however, Voisey found few opportunities. "It was hard to get a piece played, hard to get musicians to look at it," he says. "There were no venues. There were and are very limited opportunities, no matter how you slice it."

Finally, frustrated by years of knocking on doors with no success, in 2000 Voisey set up a website, Vox Novus, to promote his and his friends' music.

"The idea was to create a community of composers, artists and musicians to work together to promote each other," he says. He started with five composers. "Now there are 120 and a few loose musicians I promote here and there."

Subsequently, in 2003, Voisey created the 60x60 Project, which every year showcases 60 composers, each contributing a 60-second piece. "I've had more than 1,000 composers submit to the project over the past five years," he says. "It's completely open to anybody. Spread the word. The more the merrier."