A note from MATA’s Executive Director:
Dear MATA community,
I hope you and your loved ones are staying safe during these uncertain times. I’m writing today to share an important update regarding the MATA Festival. Following the implementation of new and necessary quarantine measures in New York, MATA is postponing the 2020 MATA Festival, originally planned for April 17-20.
While this is a sad development, it is not an unexpected one, and MATA has been working closely with both ICEensemble and the New School over the last few weeks to prepare for this outcome. MATA has also been working to ensure that our musicians and other creative partners are taken care of during this difficult time. We are continuing to monitor the situation closely, and look forward to rescheduling the Festival for a time when our audience, composers, performers, and production team can safely participate.
While the Festival won’t take place as intended this spring, we remain committed to furthering MATA’s core mission: to promote and support early-career composers. To this end, we are working with our partners to develop digital content that we can share in the interim. We hope to share more news about this in the coming days. MATA is also moving forward with our 2021 Call for Submissions, and encourages all composers and sound artists to apply.
The music community is as resilient as it is compassionate, and I am confident we will emerge from this crisis stronger and more creative than ever. In the meantime, please stay safe and stay healthy.
Sincerely,
Loren Loiacono
Executive Director, MATA
8:00 PM | The New School – Ernst C. Stiefel Concert Hall (55 W 13th St, NYC)
On Friday April 17, the 22nd annual MATA Festival opens with Memory L00Ps, featuring the world premieres of two new large-scale works exploring themes of memory, technology, and legacy. Lise Morrison’s Herinneringe (Afrikaans for “keepsakes” or “recollections”) looks to the past, “salvaging” cassette players and medieval counterpoint to create something wholly personal and new. Jason Thorpe Buchanan’s The End of Forgetting uses live electronics and real-time processing of performer movements to ask: how can we define our present amid constant cyber echoes of our past selves? The audience will also be invited to experience (six (channels)), a sound installation by Nolan Lem which recycles and repurposes audio data from server farms to create “undulating drones of dense sonic mass”.
Program
Jason Thorpe Buchanan (USA/Thailand): The End of Forgetting (2020, MATA Commission/World Premiere)
Lise Morrison (South Africa/Netherlands): Herinneringe (2020, MATA Commission/World Premiere)
Nolan Lem (USA): (six (channels)) (2015, New York Premiere)
Performances and commissioning activities during the 2019-20 concert season are made possible by the generous support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, A.N. and Pearl G. Barnett Family Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music Inc., Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Francis Goelet Charitable Lead Trusts, Amphion Foundation, Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Pacific Harmony Foundation, Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, mediaThe foundation inc., The Casement Fund, BMI Foundation, as well as public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council for the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the Illinois Arts Council Agency. The International Contemporary Ensemble is the Ensemble in Residence of the Nokia Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology. Yamaha Artist Services New York is the exclusive piano provider for ICE.