California Institute of the Arts will stage two special events this spring as part of the Wild Beast Concert Series hosted by The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts in Valencia.

For “CalArts Brass Signals Day into Night,” faculty, students and guests will perform contemporary music from around the world as the sun sets over the open-air concert on Saturday, April 14, starting at 6 p.m.

“CalArts Brass Signals Day into Night” is a global tour of contemporary music for brass ensemble, with stops in Russia, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Sweden. Some works will use the spatial possibilities of the Wild Beast courtyard; brass sounding around the space will herald the approaching dusk.

On May 5, “World Rhythms with Pete Lockett” will ignite an incendiary evening of culture-spanning percussion performances starting at 7 p.m. Admission is free. Advance registration is suggested.

“World Rhythms with Pete Lockett” offers an evening of world percussion with the CalArts World Percussion Ensemble. Visiting artist Pete Lockett is featured along with world percussion group Hands Ensemble, with tabla maestro and CalArts faculty Swapan Chaudhuri, plus special guests.

CalArts is one of the first schools in the country to offer world music for performance — and this event is a special part of the Herb Alpert School of Music’s annual World Music Festival.

Designed by Hodgetts + Fung, the Wild Beast music pavilion on the CalArts campus has been dubbed a “mini-Hollywood Bowl” for its delightful outdoor amphitheater setting. With open lawn seating, families are welcome and picnics encouraged at Santa Clarita’s most intimate concert setting. With its capacity to accommodate more than 750 guests on the S. Mark Taper Foundation Courtyard grounds, the Wild Beast allows CalArts to share and engage its students, faculty, alumni and visiting artists with the broader Santa Clarita Valley community and beyond.

CalArts was recently ranked America’s number one college for students in the arts by Newsweek/The Daily Beast. With its six related schools — Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film/Video, and Music and Theater — CalArts is unique in its multidisciplinary approach to studying the arts.

CalArts encourages students to recognize and explore the complexity of the aesthetic, social and political aspects of the arts. It is supported by its distinguished faculty of practicing artists and provides its BFA, MFA and DMA students with both the hands-on training and the engagement with the cultural community necessary for artists’ growth.

CalArts was founded in 1961 — and opened in 1969 — as the first institution of higher learning in the U.S. specifically for students interested in pursuing degrees in the visual and performing arts.