From the liner notes:
Famously surrounded by sprawl to the north, Mexico to the south, the ocean to the west and the desert to the east, much of San Diego feels like an isolated beach town that never stopped growing, or an L.A. that never started. But this sleepy, sunny city hosts one of the country's most active new music communities, centered around the youthful music program at the University of California, San Diego in La Jolla. None of the six composers represented here are older than 30, and all demonstrate the extraordinary vitality of new classical music in San Diego.
The city's contemporary music scene is known as more Modernist and European than those of most U.S. cities, and not without reason. But San Diego’s young composers aren’t the wild-eyed revolutionary Modernists of the 1950s. Instead, they’ve developed highly individual styles not by trying to topple the existing order, but through craft and attention to detail.
In this respect, San Diego's relative isolation might be an advantage. The city is large enough for its composers to maintain a broad perspective on the political, economic and cultural realities of American life, but small enough that they are outsiders in the best possible way, easily able to maintain unique identities. You probably won’t find the San Diego composer climbing on any bandwagons or speaking in buzzword-heavy snippets. Instead you’ll find her out there, to the west of you, working lovingly on something deeply personal and vividly new.
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