The Eighth Annual New Music Festival at California Lutheran University will feature the music and words of Grammy Award-winning composer Libby Larsen.

CLU choral ensembles and faculty and student soloists will present the “New Music Concert: The Music of Libby Larsen” at 8 p.m. Friday, April 23, in Samuelson Chapel. Areté Vocal Ensemble, a professional group in residence at CLU, will also perform in the free concert. Wyant Morton, chair of the music department and director of choral and vocal activities, will conduct.

One of America’s most performed composers, Larsen will present “The Concert Hall that Fell Asleep and Woke Up as a Car Radio” at a free public lecture earlier in the day. She will talk about the concert music tradition and the role of the composer in it at 10 a.m. in Samuelson Chapel.

The prolific composer has created a catalog of more than 400 works spanning virtually every genre, from intimate vocal and chamber music to massive orchestral works and more than 12 operas. Widely recorded, including more than 50 CDs of her work, she is constantly in demand for commissions and premieres by major artists, ensembles and orchestras around the world, and has established a permanent place for her works in the concert repertory.

Larsen is also a vigorous, articulate champion of the music and musicians of our time. In 1973, she co-founded the Minnesota Composers Forum, which is now the American Composers Forum.

A former holder of the Harissios Papamarkou Chair in Education at the Library of Congress, she received the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The first woman to serve as a resident composer with a major orchestra, Larsen has held residencies with the Minnesota Orchestra, the Charlotte Symphony and the Colorado Symphony.

Donations will be accepted.

The chapel is located off of Campus Drive south of Olsen Road on the Thousand Oaks campus. Additional parking is available in the lot at the corner of Mountclef Boulevard and Olsen Road.