9th Annual MATA Festival
Gathers Young Composers from around the World to Brooklyn!
19 Selected Composers, 3 Commissioned Works, and 11 Premieres
WHEN
Family Matinee, Sunday, March 18th @ 3pm
Tuesday, March 20th @ 8pm , Wednesday, March 21st @ 8pm, Thursday, March 22nd @ 8pm,
and Saturday, March 24th @ 8pm
WHERE
Brooklyn Lyceum, 227 4th Avenue, Brooklyn. Train R to Union Street
CONTACT
April Thibeault, AMT PR,
april@amtpublicrelations.com,
212 861 0990
The 9th Annual MATA Festival, a global catalyst for emerging composers and contemporary music, presents a lively performance series of new and recent genre-jumping works at the cutting-edge experimental space, the Brooklyn Lyceum.
Fully committed to expanding the canon of classical music, MATA has selected 19 young composers representing diverse cultures and musical backgrounds including this year’s MATA commissionees: Yotam Haber, Ned McGowan, and Christopher Tignor. Under the leadership of MATA’s Directors Lisa Bielawa and James Matheson and Curator Christopher McIntyre, the festival features works written for, in collaboration with, and to be performed by two versatile ensembles: the quintet Hexnut, and the Brooklyn-based orchestra, The Knights.
In keeping with its spirit of adventure, MATA is marching the festival into the borough of Brooklyn. According to James Matheson, Executive Director of MATA, this marks an exciting chapter for both the organization and the field of new music. “With the coupling of the ever-evolving music scene with the MySpace generation of composers, it’s imperative for us to explore new avenues. We’re thrilled to be incubating new music in the Brooklyn community.”
This year’s MATA festival features 19 composers in their 20s and 30s serving as ambassadors from around the world including the United States (12), the Netherlands (2), France, Italy, Japan, Brazil, and Germany. Some highlights include the New York premiere of Christopher Bailey’s electroacoustic, soda machine-inspired The Quiet Play of Busy Pipes, Missy Mazzoli’s haunting Shy Girl Shouting Music for soprano, electric guitar, piano and double bass, and composer/pianist Bruno Ruviaro’s juxtaposition of acoustic piano and its electroacoustic counterpart in Instantânea.
Composer Andrew Norman, winner of the 2006 Rome Prize, has sketched a motoric, virtuoso piece for violin ensemble: Gran Turismo portrays the striking parallels among the car racing video game of the same name, the “force lines” found in Italian Futurist art-specifically in Giacomo Balla’s 1913 series of speeding cars– and the competitiveness found in the Baroque model of soloists versus ensemble that is prominent in Norman’s music. Japanese composer/pianist Hideki Kozakura brings the sound of shakuhachi, the Japanese bamboo flute, to his serene piece Shorai, a Japanese term referring to the soft rustle sounds heard when wind passes through pine trees, which the Japanese believe to be therapeutic.
To date, MATA has commissioned almost 40 new works and has presented over 160 new compositions by young composers. This year’s commissions include:
A wine-dark sea by Yotam Haber, a 2005 Guggenheim fellow; Untitled by Ned McGowan, an American expatriate living in Amsterdam, and known as a leading contemporary composer/flutist; and Thunder Lay Down in the Heart for string orchestra and laptop by Christopher Tignor. In addition, MATA is thrilled to welcome 2006 commissionee Kalna Katsoum to this year’s festival. (Due to unfortunate transportation problems last season, she wasn’t able to perform her commissioned piece.) Her American debut is a multimedia production featuring Katsoum as laptopist/vocalist alongside film projections by Brooklyn-based video artist Shige Moriya.
About Hexnut
Hexnut is a virtuosic ensemble coming out of the Karnatic Lab, the Amsterdam modern music club responsible for many of the new developments in Amsterdam's contemporary music circles of today.
Hexnut is a five soloist ensemble including Susanna Borsch (recorders), Ned McGowan (flute/contrabass flute), Gijs Levelt (trumpet), Ere Lievonen (piano), and the vocalist Stephie Buttrich, known for her fiery use of extended vocal techniques. Hexnut is a new music group mixing styles, sounds and playing techniques from contemporary classical, jazz, metal, improvisation, Indian, Balkan and cartoon music. While mostly composed, their pieces also exploit improvisation and theater. Since their debut in 2004, Hexnut has played to full halls at the Grachten Festival, Klap op de Vuurpijl Festival and at the Bimhuis.
About The Knights
The Knights is a fellowship of young musicians from diverse and accomplished backgrounds, who come together for the shared joy of musical exploration.
The Knights have brought audiences varied and engaging programs consisting of classical masterworks, world premieres and arrangements of “roots” music-e.g. gypsy tunes, Neapolitan love songs and dances, and original songs.
The group frequently presents concerts at Bargemusic, Old Westbury Gardens, and other New York venues. It’s a flexible ensemble that appears most frequently as a string orchestra. Members of the group are mostly recent graduates of Juilliard, Curtis, Manhattan and Mannes who are individually accomplished solo and chamber players. They have performed with many orchestras both in the US and abroad and have been heard at many prestigious music festivals including Marlboro, Tanglewood, Salzburg, Ravinia and Verbier.
