San Diego Downtown News san diego downtown community news

By Jen Lothspeich

As its name suggests, the Springboard West Music Festival aims to catapult emerging talents to the next level of music-making when it comes to town Jan. 11-13, but it is not for the casual player.

Emerging artists are selected from all over the world to perform at the festival — not just for San Diegans — but for industry professionals who have worked with top talents. Plus, with a two-day “Band Bootcamp,” participants also receive guidance from those qualified mentors and get the chance to perform for them.

By Jen Lothspeich

He can be heard on local radio airwaves, he can be seen Saturday nights on television, and he can be encountered at rock venues nearly every night of the week; and he is arguably, the most interesting man in San Diego.

Local music guru Tim Pyles is essentially a native, having lived in San Diego since age 4 and growing up as what he calls a “Mod Ska kid” of the ’80s and a raver in the ’90s. He said his love of live music reignited in the late ’90s while his radio career began in 1997.

By Joan Wojcik The number 88.3 on your FM radio dial represents an unexpected, but awesome discovery for San Diego music lovers. The station broadcasts some of the best jazz music in the nation and is located at San Diego City College in East Village.

By Dustin Lothspeich

“There are a lot of big-name acts and a lot of different genres. It’s quite an undertaking. I’m honored they asked me to play. Maybe they thought they were booking Steel Pulse and they got Steve Poltz.”

When you’re talking with Poltz, the world-renowned San Diego singer/songwriter perhaps most famous for penning the No. 1 hit “You Were Meant for Me” with Jewel, the conversation is always a blitz of hilarity, wit and good ol’ fashioned self-deprecation.

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why the organizers at the Kaaboo Del Mar music and arts festival booked him for this year’s incarnation: he’s kind of irresistible — both onstage and off.

Prodigy the focus of this year’s festival

By Charlene Baldridge

Want to discover more about Mozart’s music and genius?

Genius doesn’t grow on trees. Neither does prodigy.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of the most prolific and profoundly influential composers who ever lived — he would have had his 260th birthday in January — was both genius and prodigy. By the age of 5, he was playing keyboard and violin like a master and performing before the crowned heads of Europe, thanks to his father, a promoter par excellence.