MATA Festival

Festival Story:

MATA Festival brings together established composers and performers and innovative new artists and new works. The artists hail from around the world bringing their cutting edge music to the fore with, installations, talent-driven works and innovative view of the world to the Brooklyn Lyceum. Commissioned works and collaborations are featured and the program is rounded out by a lecture and gatherings. All performances take place at the Brooklyn Lyceum, a converted bath house located in the midst of the thriving arts scene in the Park Slope and Gowanus neighborhoods.

Festival Events:

Programming 2013:

• Wednesday, April 17, 7:00pm
  Opening Night Salon at Paula Cooper Gallery 534 West 21st Street
  FREE to Festival Pass Holders!
  Individual Tickets, $50
  
  • MATA celebrates its Quinceañera with an evening of fun and surprises. Featuring performances by the 2013 MATA Festival ensemble-in-residence Meitar as well as MATA luminaries Chris McIntyre, Joan La Barbara, and Missy Mazzoli.
• Thursday, April 18, 2pm
  Workshop I: The Business of Being a Composer
  Hosted by BMI
  7 World Trade Center/250 Greenwich Street
  FREE EVENT - RSVP to info@matafestival.org
  
  • An in-depth, roundtable session on the business of being a composer — those secrets, tips, and best practices that aren’t taught at the conservatory — with New Music USA’s Program Manager Scott Winship, Composer Advocate Frank J. Oteri, Laura Kaminsky (Symphony Space), Sean Hickey (Naxos) and special guests. Moderated by every composer’s friend, Ralph Jackson. Hosted by BMI.
• Thursday, April 18, 7:30pm
  Meitar Ensemble: The Lions of Tel Aviv at Roulette 509 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn
  
  • Meitar, Israel’s leading new music ensemble, comes to us direct from Tel Aviv for their American debut. Ha’aretz has called them “…[Israel’s] best musicians” and they have won numerous awards in Israel, performing in some of the most prestigious venues and festivals globally. The concert will feature a world premiere MATA commission by Bryan Jacobs; a world premiere by Israeli composer Ofer Pelz; Enda Bates’s crepuscular Calls from the Fog for flute and electronics; Marcin Stancyzk’s haunting Mosaique, for cello and electronics; and direct from Mercury, a brand new arrangement of Christopher Bailey’s microtonal hymn of self-immolation, performed in the Mercurian language by the mesmerizing duo of Sukato and Meredith Borden, accompanied by live video by Charles Woodman.
• Friday, April 19, 2pm
  Workshop II: Reading Session with Meitar Ensemble
  Hosted by BMI
  7 World Trade Center/250 Greenwich Street
  FREE EVENT - RSVP to info@matafestival.org
  
  • Meitar, Israel’s premier new music ensemble, will workshop and discuss new works by selected American and Israeli composers. Featuring composers Lydia Ainsworth, Jenny Beck, Marek Poliks, Tomer Hod, and Ziv Cojocaru.
• Friday, April 19, 7:30pm
  Mechanical Turks at Roulette
  509 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn
  
  • MATA presents an evening of works that stand at the intersection of new music, performance art and sound art. Known for her work with concrete sounds, Dutch-Welsh composer Jobina Tinnemans incorporates non-musicians into a new music context. Her MATA commission, a concerto grosso for solo knitters, instrumental ensemble and a ripieno orchestra of knitters, visualizes the passage of time through its trace in fibre. In addition, MATA presents Henry Vega’s hyperspeed invocations for vocalist and electronic sounds performed by American expat vocalist Stephanie Pan accompanied by video projection by Emmanuel Flores; Jessie Marino’s performance art piece written for the two performers of On Structure; and Seth Cluett’s enactment of weather patterns on a metal tray of water activated by electronic sounds and three clarinets.
• Saturday, April 20, 2pm
  Workshop III: Words & Music
  Hosted by Columbia University
  2960 Broadway, at 116th St
  Dodge Hall, Room 620
  FREE EVENT - RSVP to info@matafestival.org
  
  • Opera and song are flourishing these days with ample room for interdisciplinary cross-pollination. The daring David Del Tredici is joined by vocal virtuoso and composer Joan La Barbara and independent opera’s rising composer/librettist duo, David T. Little and Royce Vavrek and other special guests including Stewart Wallace, Paola Prestini, and Steve Burke. Together, the panel explores the ways that composers, poets, and librettists collaborate and create.
• Saturday, April 20, 7:30pm
  Magellan Modern Featuring Talea Ensemble at Roulette 509 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn
  
  • Talea, called a “vital part of the New York contemporary-classical scene” by The New York Times, performs works by young composers from six countries chosen from the more than 600 submissions to our annual call for scores. Evan Antonellis’s MATA commission sets the stage with a poetic series of miniature journeys for ensemble. David Fennessy takes us on a journey inspired by the “Thirteen Factories of Canton.” Taylor Brook presents a memory of the summer morning on the lake of Schoenberg’s “Farben.” Milica Djordjevic’s moves into the subconscious, while Hugo Morales continues the inward motion, releasing the sounds inherent in objects. Mauro Lanza allows those objects to move on their own and settle, as ashes, into shapes.

Other Sources:

Podcast interviews:

• If you like this festival, listen to…
  
  • Lukas Ligeti, composer and percussionist
    http://kadmusarts.com/podcasts/?p=950

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