Announcing the 27th Annual MATA Festival — in Partnership with ISSUE Project Room — INTERGALACTIC INFINITY: Music Between Spaces
June 11-14, 2025
Featuring Music by 18 Early-Career Composers
Alongside Major Works by Jessie Cox, Oliver Lake, George Lewis, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, and a World Premiere by Reza Vali
Performances by Sun Ra Arkestra, FLUX Quartet, Ensemble LPR, TROPOS, RE:duo, MATA Mavens, and More
“the most exciting showcase for outstanding young composers from around the world” – The New Yorker
June 11-14, 2025 at 7pm (Doors 6:30pm)
ISSUE Project Room | 22 Boerum Place | Brooklyn, NY
Festival Passes On Sale April 22, Single Tickets Available May 1:
www.matafestival.org/mata-festival-2025
New York, NY – From June 11-14, 2025, MATA presents its 27th annual MATA Festival, this year in partnership with ISSUE Project Room, featuring four concerts across four nights exploring the concept of INTERGALACTIC INFINITY: Music Between Spaces – music that connects with the diaspora of ancestry and heritage, around ideas of imagination, mysticism, liberation, science fiction, history, fantasy, and technoculture. The New York Times has hailed the MATA Festival as “nondogmatic, even antidogmatic,” while The Wall Street Journal reports that it “tells us a lot about how composers are thinking now.”
The MATA Festival has been a much-anticipated fixture of the New York and worldwide new music scene since its founding in 1996 by Philip Glass, Eleonor Sandresky, and Lisa Bielawa, who established “Music at the Anthology,” now called MATA, as a means of providing early-career composers a platform for finding community and creating performance opportunities. Nearly 30 years later, MATA still serves as an incubator for adventurous emerging artists experimenting with composition, multi-media, performance art, and every imaginable sound in between. Its annual MATA Festival has become one of the most sought-after opportunities for young and emerging composers.
Curated by MATA Executive Director Pauline Kim Harris, the 2025 MATA Festival features works by 18 composers in the early stages of their professional careers, selected by Harris and a panel of eight esteemed composers and artists – Titilayo Ayangade, Tom Chiu, Felix Fan, John Glover, Conrad Harris, Max Mandel, Paula Matthusen, and Kal Sugatski – from a free, global call resulting in over 300 submissions.
Pauline Kim Harris has crafted four unique concert programs for the Festival that combine the works of these early-career composers with major works by six legendary artists – Jessie Cox (whose Enter the Impossible was written for and will be performed by Sun Ra Arkestra and FLUX Quartet), Oliver Lake, George Lewis, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, and Reza Vali. The 2025 MATA Festival performers include Sun Ra Arkestra, FLUX Quartet, Ensemble LPR conducted by Tito Muñoz, TROPOS, RE:duo, and the MATA Mavens to include Majel Connery, soprano; Oshay LeGare, baritone; Titilayo Ayangade, cello; Laura Cocks, flutes; Louis Arques, clarinets; Sam Nester, trumpet; Han Chen, piano; Erika Dohi, piano; Paul Kerekes, piano; Sam Yulsman, piano; and Josh Perry, percussion.
“This year’s festival brings focus to a past and future of musical exploration by living legends, manifesting a legacy which continues to influence, inspire and impact generations of composers — grounded by the complexities and intersections of identity, race, history, and cultural ethos,” says MATA Executive Director Pauline Kim Harris. “Each night of the four-day festival is titled after a work by an iconic pioneer in the fabric of the American sound that makes up music today, performed by the illustrious FLUX Quartet and on opening night, Sun Ra Arkestra. Programs are further illuminated by the selected early-career composers, our very own MATA Mavens and invited guest artists and ensembles, igniting the intimacy of the experience, uniquely curated for a four-night journey. Attending the full festival is highly recommended.”
Composers that have been presented by MATA early in their careers include future Rome, Alpert, Takemitsu, Siemens, and Pulitzer Prize-winners, Guggenheim Fellows, and MacArthur “Geniuses.” For a full list of MATA Alumni, visit www.matafestival.org/mata-alumni. This year’s cohort of 18 composers includes:
Diallo Banks is interested in sympathetic resonance, open scores, improvisation, and instrument modification. As a performer, his work pushes the Hammond organ’s capabilities to its limits while still firmly engaging with its history as a sonic signifier of Black identity. His works have been commissioned and performed by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Yale Philharmonia, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Aspen Conducting Orchestra, and Contemporary Insights Ensemble in Leipzig, Germany. In the fall of 2025, he will begin his Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition at Columbia University.
Anuj Bhutani is a first-generation Indian-American whose work is focused on liminal spaces, and as such is often highly interdisciplinary, engaging with theater, dance, and film while drawing on his musical background in classical, emo/screamo, ambient, singer/songwriter, and electronic music, resulting in genre- and culturally-fluid pieces that firmly situate the listener between multiple musical worlds at once. His music has been called "alternately celestial and dark" by WNYC's John Schaefer.
Inga Chinilina is a multimedia composer with concert pieces ranging from solo to orchestral compositions, alongside works for dance, film, and installations. She sees music as an act of translation, a concept she explores in both her academic and creative work. In her creative practice, Inga transforms personal stories into sonic expressions, reflecting a wide range of societal issues, including immigration, womanhood, and the environment. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Music and Multimedia Composition at Brown University.
Rodrigo Espino is a Mexican composer and sound artist. His music is a visceral experience, produced and perceived through the entire body. The driving force behind his music emerges from the experience of epilepsy and physical pain, exploring the body’s inability to voice itself as a catalyst for transforming convulsion into creative energy. His works have been presented at Mexico's most important venues, such as the Palacio Nacional de Bellas Artes, as well as in Brazil and Switzerland.
Ledah Finck is a violinist, violist, improviser, and composer based in New York City. A passionate performer, creator, and curator of contemporary classical and experimental music, she is a co-founder of the Bergamot Quartet, as well as Tropos and earspace ensemble. As a composer, she has been commissioned by Imani Winds, Alarm Will Sound, Ayane and Paul, and more. Her music embodies a desire to create and share a sound-world in which the classical tradition, the folk music with which she grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and an extensive improvisatory sensibility, are in productive dialogue.
Nina Fukuoka is a Japanese and Polish composer and performer based in New York City. She makes instrumental and computer music and uses various media and technologies to express extramusical meaning. Her works are focused on the contemporary world through the lens of horror esthetics, video games, and feminist scholarships. She explores the possibilities of communicating through art by superimposing latent meanings with distinct images within the context of tradition and mass culture.
Kylan Hillman is a composer, guitarist, and improviser whose primary interest is destroying and scrambling material to investigate the beauty in imperfection. His music often includes visceral computerized glitches, novel approaches to traditional instruments, and harsh walls of noise. Kylan’s recent output includes Methods of Crunching which uses objects like butterknives, screwdrivers, and guitar picks to create overwhelming scratching, popping, and rubbing sound. He is currently a Master’s student studying composition at Montclair State University in New Jersey.
New York City-based composer, pianist, and video artist Brian Mark has been hailed by the American Composers Forum as an “intelligent, modern composer who employs many media elements and does so with marked idiosyncrasy and depth.” He has had works performed by the BBC Singers, Chelsea Symphony, Pacific Chamber Orchestra, Psappha Ensemble, members of the London Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Signal, the Ligeti Quartet, and more. He completed his Ph.D. at the Royal Academy of Music and is also a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Berklee College of Music, and Boston University.
Anna Meadors is a composer, saxophonist, electronic music producer, and educator. Her music is inspired by nature walks and small details, birds, slightly uneven pulses, the buzzy stillness of bodies of water, and joyful improvisation. Her saxophone playing has been described as “potently feral” (American Pancake) and “sprawling across the walls and dripping onto the floor all John Zorn-like” (Outside Left). She graduated from Peabody Conservatory with a B.M. in saxophone performance, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with an M.M. in Composition, and recently finished her Ph.D. at Princeton University in Music Composition.
Giordano Bruno do Nascimento, born in Brazil, is a German composer distinguished by his profound artistic exploration of the role of the human voice in our society. Do Nascimento’s artistic practice is dedicated to exploring the diverse meanings and functions of the human voice. These investigations frequently culminate in new works. His research also delves into the intersections of gender and voice, examining how vocal expressions can transcend traditional gender norms and contribute to a more fluid understanding of identity. Currently, do Nascimento is exploring “the boundaries of the human voice in its definitions” as part of his doctoral studies at the HfMT Hamburg.
The "spellbinding" (Washington Post) music of Chicago-based composer Paul Novak immerses listeners in shimmering and subtly crafted musical worlds full of color, motion, light, and magic. His recent projects engage with dreams and memory, queer identity, climate change and the natural world, and psychosomatic illness. His music has been heard at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, New World Center, and Chicago's Symphony Center. Novak is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago.
Sofia Jen Ouyang is committed to creating artwork that both expressively and critically engages with other people and the world. Her works have been performed across the US, Europe, and Asia, including in venues such as Lincoln Center, Frankfurt Oper, Columbia University Miller Theatre, Luzern KKL, Arvo Pärt Center, National Sawdust, New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall, and more. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Composition at Columbia University.
Born in Puerto Rico, Luis Quintana is an internationally recognized composer based in France who extends the frontiers of his musical universe from concert music to acousmatic pieces and sound installations. Captivated by cultural fusions and their sonic expressions, he engages in an ongoing dialogue between diverse traditions, merging ancient heritages, natural soundscapes, and contemporary practices. He holds a Master’s Degree from the Paris National Conservatory.
Kevin Ramsay is a composer, producer, recording/mixing/mastering/sound engineer, and musician on several critically acclaimed international albums. Brooklyn born and based, Ramsay’s work focuses primarily on theoretical, practical aspects of sound recording/reproduction with unpredictable pairings of acoustic and electronic instruments. Kevin’s current works explore new ways to capture, mix, and process immersive audio for playback on multichannel sound systems.
Jee Seo is a South Korean contemporary classical music composer. Over the last decade, his works have been presented by numerous performers and ensembles in more than 50 cities and about 20 countries across four continents. Jee has been collaborating on a wide range of projects with artists, dancers, and filmmakers, and his collaborative music videos have been screened at festivals worldwide. He is currently a doctoral student at the Chopin University of Music in Warsaw.
Negar Soleymanifar is an Iranian composer and performer currently based in Middletown, CT. She centers her work on an interpersonal perspective and its relationship to other human beings, exploring psychological states, inner struggles, and social contexts through her music, with the aim of communicating what seems uncommunicable. She holds a bachelor's degree in music composition from the Tehran University of Art and is pursuing an M.A. in music with a concentration in experimental music and composition at Wesleyan University.
Andrew Stock is a composer and artist working in concert and installative formats with focus areas in experimental music, conceptual art, and Black studies. His work has been commissioned or programmed by groups and festivals including LA Phil/wild Up, Fonema Consort, Quince Ensemble, the New York Virtuoso Singers, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, and Ostrava Days (CZ). He is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago.
Petra Strahovnik is an internationally acclaimed composer and interdisciplinary artist, celebrated for her fearless exploration of sound and music. Her groundbreaking works blend music, performance, and visual art, drawing inspiration from societal issues and human experiences. She won the 66th International Rostrum of Composers Prize and her achievements also include a Fellowship and Art Residency at Villa Concordia in Bamberg, and the Berlin Art Prize for Music 2021.
In addition to its annual MATA Festival, MATA’s activities include MATA Presents, which brings commissioned projects to venues and non-conventional spaces throughout New York; MATA Jr., an evening of music by pre-college composers, mentored by emerging composers, and performed by top performers in new music; special MATAthon fundraising events throughout the year which bring supporters in close communion with MATA artists; and MATAlab, a new concert platform that embraces the casual atmosphere of a chamber music reading party that allows composers, musicians, and audiences to mingle and discover new music together. ASCAP has awarded MATA its prestigious Aaron Copland Award in recognition of its ongoing work.
27th Annual MATA Festival Schedule
ENTER THE IMPOSSIBLE
Opening Night: Wednesday, June 11, 2025 at 7pm (doors 6:30)
ISSUE Project Room, 22 Boerum Place, Brooklyn, NY
Performances by Sun Ra Arkestra; FLUX Quartet; Jessie Cox, drums; and Sam Yulsman, piano and electronics
Program:
Jessie Cox: Enter the Impossible (2023) for Sun Ra Arkestra; commissioned by the Paul Fromm Foundation
Oliver Lake: One Move (2022, New York Premiere)
Jessie Cox: Sound Drape Painting (2025, World Premiere)
+*Diallo Banks: Sarmad for String Quartet (2025, World Premiere)
The 27th annual MATA Festival opens with Jessie Cox’s evening-length opus Enter the Impossible, written for and performed by the unparalleled Sun Ra Arkestra, with FLUX Quartet and Sam Yulsman. Enter the Impossible is imagined as a space flight, journeying through different musical spaces, including many pieces from Sun Ra Arkestra’s large collection of works, such as Say from their recent record Swirling, or the classic Space is the Place, among others. The concert also includes the world premiere of Cox’s Sound Drape Painting, inspired by Sam Gilliam’s drape paintings and exploring new ways of hearing musical form and movement through the sonic. Cox explains, “Music as aesthetic experience proposes, or is a site to imagine, ways of spacing – how we come to inhabit and make space and time." FLUX Quartet will also perform the New York premiere of jazz saxophonist, flutist, composer, poet, and visual artist Oliver Lake’s One Move as well as the world premiere of MATA Festival 2025 Early-Career Composer Diallo Banks’ Sarmad for string quartet. Sarmad is structured around the concept of yati, a principle in South Indian music that shapes musical phrases through systematic variation.
Full program information: www.matafestival.org/mata-festival-2025
THE CAPITOL
Night Two: Thursday, June 12, 2025 at 7pm (doors 6:30)
ISSUE Project Room, 22 Boerum Place, Brooklyn, NY
Performances by FLUX Quartet, MATA Mavens, TROPOS, and RE:duo
Program:
Wadada Leo Smith: String Quartet No. 17 (The Capitol, Washington D.C.: An Experiment With Democracy and Capitalism) for String Quartet (2024, New York Premiere)
Roscoe Mitchell: 9/9/99 With CARDS for String Quartet (2009/2011, rev. 2021, New York Premiere)
*Ledah Finck: The Best Donuts In Pennsylvania for Violin, Saxophone, Piano and Drums (2023)
*Inga Chinilina: Shock Workers for Viola, Saxophone and Motors (2024, New York Premiere)
*Kylan Hillman: Methods of Crunching for Electric Guitar (2024)
*Anna Meadors: Encircle, recirculate for Saxophone and No-Input Mixer (2025, World Premiere)
*Jee Seo: On Fever II for Solo Violin (2017, New York Premiere)
*Brian Mark: Per Aspera Ad Astra for Solo Violin and Digital Delay Processing Pedal with Video (2020)
Night Two of the 27th Annual MATA Festival features the New York premiere of Wadada Leo Smith's String Quartet No. 17 (The Capitol, Washington D.C.: An Experiment With Democracy and Capitalism) which examines the U.S. Capitol building as both a symbol of democracy and insurrection, performed by FLUX Quartet. FLUX Quartet also performs the New York premiere of Roscoe Mitchell's 9/9/99 With CARDS, which Mitchell describes as a “scored improvisation,” in which each player is given six cards with musical notation on them that they can arrange, reshuffle, and perform in different “hands.” Night Two also includes six works by MATA Festival 2025 Early-Career Composers for varying instrumentation – from solo violin to an ensemble of viola, saxophone, and motors – performed by MATA Mavens, TROPOS, and RE:duo.
Full program information: www.matafestival.org/mata-festival-2025
SALMAK (World Premiere)
Night Three: Friday, June 13, 2025 at 7pm (doors 6:30)
ISSUE Project Room, 22 Boerum Place, Brooklyn, NY
Performances by FLUX Quartet and MATA Mavens
Program:
Reza Vali: String Quartet No. 6, Salmak (2024, World Premiere)
*Petra Strahovnik: Attack for String Quartet (2023, New York Premiere)
*Anuj Bhutani: On Letting Go for Solo Cello and Electronics (2020)
*Rodrigo Espino: Responso el en Vacío for Contrabass Clarinet and Electronics (2023, World Premiere)
*Negar Soleymanifar: Prelude to the Ashes for Cello and Narrator (2023, New York Premiere)
Night Three of the 27th Annual MATA Festival is centered around the world premiere of Reza Vali’s String Quartet No. 6, Salmak, a tribute to the great 13th century Persian music theorist and musician Safialdin Ormavi. Vali says of the work, “I have used some of Ormavi’s 13th century medieval modes and have interpolated these modes with some of the modes of the modern Persian modal system, the Dastgâh system.” The evening also includes four pieces by 2025 MATA Festival Early-Career Composers, each exploring varying heightened emotional states – surviving survival instincts; pain and lamentation; catharsis after the pandemic; and the struggle to release unresolved emotions – performed by FLUX Quartet and the MATA Mavens.
Full program information: www.matafestival.org/mata-festival-2025
EXPERIMENTS IN LIVING
Night Four: Saturday, June 14, 2025 at 7pm (doors 6:30)
ISSUE Project Room, 22 Boerum Place, Brooklyn, NY
Performances by Members of FLUX Quartet; Ensemble LPR led by Tito Muñoz, conductor; Majel Connery, soprano; Erika Dohi, piano; Paul Kerekes, piano; Han Chen, piano; and Oshay LeGare, baritone
Program:
George Lewis: String Quartet 1.5, “Experiments in Living” (2016)
*Giordano Bruno do Nascimento: Vis-aVis(a) for 3 Performers and One Grand Piano, 3 Toms and Credit Cards (2020, New York Premiere)
*Paul Novak: seven dreams about my body for microtonal sextet (2024, New York Premiere)
*Andrew Stock: “Les concerts ne sont jamais de veritable musique, on doit renoncer a y entendre, ce qu’il y a de beau dans l’art.” for Piano, Flute, Clarinet (or bass clarinet), Violin (or viola), Cello, and Percussion (2024, New York Premiere)
*Luis Quintana: Textos Invisibles for Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Viola, Cello, Piano, Soprano/Mezzo (2015, New York Premiere)
*Sofia Jen Ouyang: Return to Root for Conductor, Flutes, Soprano, Percussion, Recorded-improvisation, and Video (2022)
*Nina Fukuoka: Polka is a Czech Dance for Flutes, Clarinets, Cello, Percussion, Piano, with Video (2023, US Premiere)
*Kevin Ramsay: Golden Euphonics for Alto Flute, CB Clarinet, Piccolo A Trumpet, Violin, Cello, Piano, and Baritone (2023)
The centerpiece for Night Four of the 27th Annual MATA Festival is George Lewis’s String Quartet 1.5 "Experiments in Living” from 2016; Lewis's first string quartet. He says of the work, “I take ‘Experiments in Living,’ a phrase from John Stuart Mill, to express my notion of recombinant assemblage, associative sonic discourses that appear and recur in ever new forms and guises, suffused with the power of noise. . . I’m looking for listeners to experience the volatility of memory, resistance, and hope." Night Four includes seven works by 2025 MATA Festival Early-Career composers, all exploring what lies beyond our perception – from a sextet encapsulating vivid dreams during the pandemic to a work exploring the reciprocity of presence and absence – performed by FLUX Quartet, Ensemble LPR led by conductor Tito Muñoz, soprano Majel Connery, pianists Erika Dohi, Paul Kerekes, and Han Chen, and baritone Oshay LeGare.
Full program information: www.matafestival.org/mata-festival-2025
*MATA Festival 2025 Early-Career Composer
+Next Fest Composer, selected from MATA Festival alumni and participants
Programs subject to change. Visit www.matafestival.org for all festival updates and information.