Primavera Festival, UCSB’s annual spotlight on contemporary music and the digital arts, returns to campus from April 21-26 with JoAnn Kuchera-Morin as featured composer. Other than the concerts, most events are free of charge.

The festival’s opening act on April 21 at 7 p.m. is “An Evening of Improvisation,” directed by Patrick Lindley. Dancers, musicians, and a performance artist make up the show at Lotte Lehmann Hall. Tickets will be sold only at the door.

Many other events, including a sound installation in the College of Creative Studies Gallery and an evening of dance and physical theater on April 24, are free. So are screening of art/music videos that same day. For more details, go to <www.ccs.ucsb.edu/primavera> to see the complete program.

Kuchera-Morin, a pioneering composer of mixed media works, is also a UCSB professor of media arts and technology and music. She will present a free lecture/demonstration of her electronic music at 3 p.m. on April 23, accompanied by video of a Jill Felber flute performance. The following night Kuchera-Morin will hear her music, “Aquaforms,” performed at the CREATE concert. She created, built, and designed the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology, and has been the director since its inception in 1986.

Her years of experience in digital media research led to a multimillion dollar sponsored research program for the University of California, the Digital Media Innovation Program. She was chief scientist of the program from 1998 to 2003. In 2000 she began the design and development of a Digital Media Center within the California NanoSystems Institute.

The culmination of Kuchera-Morin’s efforts is the Allosphere Research Laboratory, a three-story metal sphere inside an echo-free cube, designed for interactive scientific and artistic investigations. At the conclusion of both Primavera and the All Gaucho Reunion, she will lead free tours of the Allosphere in Elings Hall on April 26 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.