By Lisa Bielawa

When I first came to New York, I had no idea how I was going to make a living. I had always written music but I didnít follow a traditional composer career path. One of my first performances in New York was of a choral piece with piano, and a mutual acquaintance recommended composer-pianist Eleonor Sandresky to me.

We became fast friends, navigating the befuddling topography of the freelance composing musician world together. A year later, by total coincidence, we both ended up performing together around the world with the Philip Glass Ensemble. Over the next few years Philip, Eleonor and I had many discussions about the challenges faced by young composers -- particularly those unaffiliated with academic institutions -- when they enter the professional sphere.

A few things happened all at once in 1997: Philip was looking for a vehicle for advocacy of young composers; the Anthology Film Archives in the East Village asked Philip if he might consider presenting concerts in their space; and Eleonor and I were starting to find ourselves at the center of a lively, bustling new generation of composers who arrived in New York in the 1990ís.

We decided to plan some concerts together at the Anthology, we raised some funds from individuals and foundations, and on September 7, 1997, our first concert as Music At The Anthology took place: ìSounds of War and Peace.î Paul Griffiths of The New York Times praised MATA for its ìesthetic policy of benign comprehensiveness,î and remarked that ìnobody could have left without finding something to remember and think about.î

Since that time, Times headlines alone reveal MATAís consistent adherence to this policy: ìStocking the Stream with New Composers,î ìA New-Music Festival Nurtures Fresh Talent,î ìZany New Music, But Quirkily Compelling,î ìPicking Up the Slack in Funky Adventure,î and ìA Transplanted Music Festival Keeps Its Spirit of Adventure.î

From the very beginning, every concert featured a commission, and guest groups and soloists from all corners of the new and experimental music field appeared. From composer-vocalist-pianist Jonathan Hart Makwaia to the Talujon Percussion Quartet to the Lionheart Vocal Sextet to the Mexican percussion duo Micro-Ritmia, the performers on our first two seasons helped define the adventurous, ecumenical breadth that MATA has become known for throughout the field.

(Many young composers have told us that they know when they apply for MATA that they can send us anything without worrying about whether itís ìour kind of thing,î and that they send us pieces they wouldnít send to any other organization!)

Our first two seasons included the world premiere of Jennifer Higdonís ìShort Storiesî by the Prism Saxophone Quartet, commissioned works by John Fitz Rogers, Anna Weesner, Chien-Yin Chen, Peter Alexander, Ted Wiprud, Carlos Carrillo and Aaron Stewart, and a multi-media theatre performance by Derek Bermelís ensemble TONK, in which different composers collaborated with librettist Wendy S. Walters to make ìThe Fences Show,î an entire evening of world premieres with actor and dancer.

Other memorable performances included two major works for large chamber ensemble: Lukas Ligetiís ìGroove Magic,î in which each of the players used an individual click track coming through headphones, resulting in a luxurious and ecstatic polyrhythmic rhapsody, and the posthumous world premiere of Randy Hostetlerís ìP(L)aces,î in which each of the performers played not only an instrument but a floor lamp, the on-off patterns of light making playful yet complex rhythmic visual tapestries.

Randyís death several years earlier, at the age of 31, would have rendered this masterful piece unperformable were it not for the participation of a whole community of musicians who knew him and his family, who helped me through the three-month-long process of reconstructing the score and identifying the many audio samples that he used in the piece.

These first two seasons (1997-98 and 1998-99) consisted of a series of concerts, one every two months throughout the year. We began almost immediately to have our guest group for each concert make the final decision on who the commissionee would be, from a short list that we culled from our ever-growing call for submissions. In this way we felt we could garner further performances of the pieces we commissioned, giving them a life beyond MATA.

Each concert also included a ëhistorical referenceí piece by a composer from a previous generation, a charismatic voice whose influence could often be felt throughout the young composersí works featured on the concert. Philip Glass performed music by John Cage and Allen Ginsberg in the first two seasons, and Eleonor and I often performed in our colleaguesí pieces as well. Dan Dryden, who was and still is a member of the Glass Ensemble, doing the live house mixes on our tours, served as Technical Director of MATA since the beginning,

The 1999-2000 season saw the advent of the festival format. At first a logistical and financial choice (there was no elevator at the Anthology, and we were paying for a piano and other rentals to be carried up and down the stairs each time), the 2000 MATA Mid-Winter Festival proved a winner. Composers of works on all four concerts came together for the whole week, sharing (sometimes heated) discussions about each otherís works and the other pieces on the festival. A burgeoning community sprang to life around the festival. We knew we had found the magic key to the community-building aspect of our mission.

Ambitious in its scope, this festival included guest groups Newband, the Western Wind, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and the Eberli Ensemble, plus our first-ever Solitary Confinement concert, in which solo works and solo composer-performers are highlighted.

Commissionees included: Marita Bolles; Annie Gosfield, who rose fearlessly to the challenge of writing for the Harry Partch instruments of Newband; Shafer Mahoney, whose piece for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus was subsequently published by Boosey & Hawkes; and pianist-composer Petros Ovsepyan, whose piece catalyzed strong audience reactions with its long silences and protracted small-scale physical motions.

Other highlights included an appearance by performance artist John Kelly in Richard Einhornís ìMetamorphosis of the Vampire,î works by Nicholas Brooke and Julia Wolfe, and Eve Beglarianís ìThe Marriage of Heaven and Hell,î for large chamber ensemble and voice, which we subsequently recorded for New World Records, with both Eleonor and me performing.

For the 2001 and 2002 festivals, in response to our growing audience and a need to have a more accessible space, we moved to the Angel Orensanz Center on the Lower East Side. These two festivals showed continuing expansion and an ever-broadening aesthetic reach, as we strove to bring together the many strands of musical life among young composers.

Guest groups included Gamelan Son of Lion, the turntable quartet the X-ecutioners, Essential Music, The New Millennium Ensemble and the world-renowned Nouvel Ensemble Moderne from Montreal.

Memorable moments included a performance of David Crumbís ìThe Whispererî by Aaron Jay Kernis and Evelyne Luest on two pianos; Carla Kihlstedt in her first public performance of her work for herself on violin and voice simultaneously; a world premiere work for shakuhachi and digital audio by Frances White; and Phil Klineís tribute to a city in pain, ìShadow Traffic,î which brought together hundreds of people carrying boomboxes throughout the Lower East Side, in a procession to the Orensanz center where violinist Todd Reynolds delivered the moving coda

Commissionees on the 2001 and 2002 festivals included Gee-Bum Kim, Lansing McLoskey, Kotoka Suzuki, Randy Nordschow, Oliver Schneller and Mortiz Eggert, whose spatialized piece, ìThere was a building (or, the 58th Street Broiler)î featured texts by celebrated cartoon essayist Ben Katchor and vocalist Theo Bleckmann with quadraphonic audio. This piece and Suzukiís major work for Carla Kihlstedt and digital audio were our commissions on the ever-popular Solitary Confinement concerts.

The 2002 festival also included the ìUrban Epicsî concert, featuring longer-form works by John Fitz Rogers (his 45-minute electric guitar monosymphony ìTransitî), Carolyn Yarnell and Anthony Gatto. That year also brought us the virtuosic piano epic ìPoundî by James Matheson, who was later to become our first-ever Executive Director, in 2005.

The 2002 Festival included our first Young Composer Reading Sessions, in which Maestra Lorraine Vaillancourt and the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne gave generous work sessions over to several composers just starting to develop large-ensemble compositional works.

We organized discussion groups for young composers as well as bringing together some of the leading figures from the composer service organizations, including a professional panel from ASCAP, BMI, Meet The Composer, the American Music Center and the American Composers Forum. Anne Midgette of The New York Times moderated a discussion on the more conceptual side of composing.

The 2003 Festival began a new tradition with our first-ever Guest Curator Randy Nordschow. Eleonor and I had become increasingly aware that, although deeply committed to an omnivorous ideological and esthetic representation on the festival, we were not on our own able to encompass as much conceptual breadth as solo curators. We knew we needed to augment our curatorial team. Randy brought with him years of experience curating events in the sound-art and gallery-based music of the San Francisco Bay Area scene.

We turned over one of our events to him. It was in the form of an exhibit entitled ìSetting the Tone,î at the Gale Gates art space in DUMBO, Brooklyn, which ran for a whole month. The opening occurred during the festival week, with simultaneous live performance of an extended aleatoric work for solo saxophone by Choh-Shih Hoh (performed by Andy Laster), and live laptop and VJ performances by VJ Pillow, James Duhamel and Roddy Schrock.

The commissioned work was Joe Diebesí ìSound Field,î an installation of fabricated sunflowers that emitted sound interactively. Other works in the exhibit included young gallery artists who worked in or with sound media, including Duncan MacDonald, Charles Gute, Bernhard Gal and Kurt Coble, whose ìP.A.M. (Partially Artificial Musicians) Bandî featured retro-tech robotics in an actual rock band format that took requests.

The three bona fide concerts on the 2003 Festival found another new home, at St. Peterís Church in Chelsea, long celebrated for its fantastic acoustics. Guest performers included Philadelphiaís premier ensemble Rel’che, the String Orchestra of New York City (SONYC) and bass clarinetist extraordinaire Michael Lowenstern. Commissionees on the concerts included Roshanne Etezady, Jeff Herriott and Michael Gatonska, whose ìTransformation of the Hummingbirdî was subsequently performed at Weill Recital Hall and recorded on the Albany label by SONYC.

Solitary Confinement IV included performances by composer-bagpiper Matthew Welch and percussionist-composer-video artist Greg Beyer. Gordon Beeferman became the first composer-improviser to do an extended live improvisation on the festival, with percussionist Jeff Arnal, and gave another bonus improvised performance on John Schaeferís ìNew Soundsî program at WNYC. SONYC gave three works their first readings at Miller Theatre as part of the Reading Sessions program, and George Steel moderated the composersí discussion group at the Kitchen.

The 2004 Festival continued the Guest Curator program with Nicholas Brookeís ìEx Machina,î a concert at Paula Cooper Gallery that celebrated work created by composers who are also instrument builders or tinkerers.

From Mari Kimuraís ìGuitarbot,î a virtuoso, if robotic, duo partner, to Dan Trumanís Lobster, an instrument that looks more like a space ball than a music-making device, these creators operate at the edges of practical musicianship, resulting in magnificent displays of sound color and unique performance vocabulary never before heard or seen on the festival. The different musical ëanimalsí were situated around the audience, who were seated on the floor so that they could rotate around to the different events as the concert unfolded.

Guest groups over at the remaining concerts at St. Peterís Church included counter)induction, the Vox Vocal Ensemble, conducted by George Steel, and Duo Violoncellissimo, all the way from the Ukraine. Commissionees included Sungji Hong, Panayiotis Kokoras and Chris Arrell. The Vox Vocal Ensemble offered a vocal-choral Reading Session. Peter Knellís ìSeven Last Wordsî featured violinist Peter Stein from Germany, who played rich, sometimes lyrical and sometimes gritty audio ìtableauxî to accompany seven sacred paintings by the violinistís own father, Rolf Stein.

In 2005 the Guest Curator role was expanded to bring in a festival-long concept developed in collaboration with composer-improviser-conductor Mick Rossi. The festival itself donned a subtitle, the Monster Composer Rally. Three concerts over two weekends featured the 10-member MATA Monster Micro-Orchestra, an ensemble of exceptional performers who are well-versed in improvisation, aleatory, and modern ìclassicalî performance practices.

The Commissionee Posse, comprised of eight young composers chosen through the annual submission and review process, came to New York for the duration of the festival. Each composed a work for the the Micro-Orchestra over the course of just one week. The first concert of the festival featured existing works from the submission pool, works by members of the M-O themselves, and other historical reference works that exploited the particular gifts of the players.

These concerts were a ëstudy labí for the Commissionee Posse, who used the information they got in rehearsals and the performance to help them write effectively for the players. Between the concert weekends, Commissionees were able to learn more about the players and their instruments in clinics with specific players. They were given space to work intensively during the week, and opportunities for exchanges with each other in the evenings. The two final concerts featured the unveiling of the eight commissioned works that were developed over the course of the week.

A new partnership formed around the Monster Rally process, with the renegade arts organization chashama, which brokers partnerships between unused commercial space in midtown Manhattan and experimental arts organizations. Two of their storefront spaces, on 42^nd Street and 44^th Street respectively, were given over to the spectacle of composers at work on their pieces for the entire week. This Composers Petting Zoo introduced thousands of people in their everyday lives to the idea of composers as people among us, who write music as part of their daily routines.

At this writing, MATA is heading into its Ninth Festival, and it has undergone some big changes. Eleonor Sandresky, now living in Budapest, Hungary, where she is pursuing a whole new set of musical and personal adventures, has become our first Artistic Director Emeritus, and I am soon to follow, at the end of the 2006-07 season. Eleonor and I will remain active on our fearless and powerful, creative, whimsical, visionary Board of Directors, which guides us into the future in partnership with Executive Director James Matheson and Curator Chris McIntyre, who together will determine the shape of festivals to come.

It has been a wild ride, and judging from the energy that is surging around the 2007 MATA Festival, the story has only just begun. Thank you to everyone who has contributed so generously, through their music, their creative energy, their material and moral support, to MATA. You are the compass by which young composers guide their first steps into the field.