28th Annual MATA Festival

INTERVAL: In Between Silence and Stasis

May 21 - 23 at DiMenna Center, NYC
Kick-off event, May 20 at Trans-Pecos in Ridgewood

“Emphasizing listening as an act of discovery, we bring forth music that emphasizes an intimate relationship with sound… With emphasis on acoustic instruments, the selected compositions reflect on Feldman’s approaches as points of departure rather than prescription.”
– Pauline Kim Harris, Executive Director of MATA

The 28th annual MATA Festival of New Music takes place May 21 - 23, with three concerts at the DiMenna Center in New York City. Hailed by The New Yorker as “the most exciting showcase for outstanding young composers from around the world,” the 2026 Festival draws on the ever-expanding artistic legacy of composer Morton Feldman, whose 100th anniversary is celebrated this year. Festival Passes are available through Eventbrite [LINK].

MATA was founded in 1996 by Philip Glass, Lisa Bielawa, and Eleanor Sandresky to address the lack of presentation opportunities for unaffiliated composers. Since then, MATA has gained international renown, presenting hundreds of fresh voices from around the world, including composers, sound artists, and performers. True to its slogan, “Tomorrow’s Music Today,” MATA is known as a vital incubator for emerging talent. 

This year’s Festival features performances by MATA Mavens, a hand-picked ensemble of top NYC new-music players, including violinists Miranda Cuckson, Conrad Harris, and Leah Asher; pianists Marilyn Nonken and Taka Kigawa; flutist Roberta Michel; singers Sara Paar and Liann J Kang; cellist Julie Kim; bassist Tristan Kasten-Krause; and percussionist Dennis Sullivan. |

Also performing are BlackBox Ensemble, a dynamic and versatile collective specializing in multidisciplinary works; Unnameable Strings, an intrepid new string-driven experimental ensemble with an emphasis on improvisation; and The Bang Group, a boundary-bursting tap and pointe dance company that merges contemporary and percussive forms.

As an upbeat to the concert events, MATA presents Experimental Resonance, Wednesday, May 20 (6 pm - midnight), a six-hour experimental “rave” curated by clarinetist/DJ Eric Umble at Trans-Pecos, 915 Wyckoff Avenue in Ridgewood, Queens. With a focus on ambient, downtempo, and experimental sounds, the gathering will bring together the nightlife and contemporary classical communities for experience and discussion in one room. Along with Umble, there will be sets by cellist/electronic artist Mizu, violinist/electronic artist Yaz Lancaster, DJ Aka Sol, and DJ/flutist Concrete Husband. The evening will also include a discussion with the performers, joined by additional guests to be announced.

I N T E R V A L :   I N   B E T W E E N   S I L E N C E   A N D   S T A S I S

This year’s MATA Festival presents fifteen new works by seventeen early-career composers who responded to a Call for Submissions seeking pieces that reflect Morton Feldman’s musical spirit, centering purity of expression, quietude, and mysticism. The submissions were reviewed by a distinguished panel: Leah Asher (violinist/violist at The Rhythm Method, composer and visual artist), Theo Espy (three-time GRAMMY-nominated violinist, concert programmer and chamber music specialist), Lauren Radnofsky (cellist and founding Co-Artistic/Executive Director of Ensemble Signal) and inti-figgis vizueta (composer and educator).

Says Pauline Kim Harris, Executive Director of MATA, “The selected compositions reflect on Feldman’s approaches as points of departure rather than prescription, utilizing natural resonance, subtle gestures, and the tangible presence of sound in space with emphasis on acoustic instruments. 

“Emphasizing listening as an act of discovery, we bring forth music that challenges formal conventions, embraces introspection, explores the ephemeral and the tactile, and cultivates an intimate relationship with sound.” Each of the three concert programs represents a different aspect of Feldman’s practice.

Early-career composers are listed in red. A complete listing follows the summaries below. Program notes can be found in our online press room [LINK], password 3dotsKEY.

28th Annual MATA Festival At-a-Glance

Wednesday, May 20 (6pm - 12am): Kick-off, EXPERIMENTAL RESONANCE: Ambient, Downtempo and Experimental

Eric Umble, Moderator & DJ; Mizu, cello & electronics; Yaz Lancaster, violin & electronics; AKA-Sol, DJ; Concrete Husband, DJ
Trans Pecos, 915 Wyckoff Ave, Ridgewood, NY 11385

Thursday, May 21 (7 pm) Night One: Positive Void – Evolving Things

The Bang Group / MATA Mavens

The DiMenna Center for Classical Music, 450 W 37th Street, New York, NY

Transformation is the keynote of this year’s opening concert, a provocative encounter between instrumental performance and movement. The Bang Group executes Steve Reich’s Clapping Music with tap shoes, and reimagines Feldman's For John Cage – scored for piano and violin – as a tap dance. At the heart of the program are intriguing new solo and duo scores for violin, flute, voice, and electronics by Yifan Guo, Liann J Kang, Anselm McDonnell, Kaleena Miller, Sami Seif, and Zihan Wu, performed by MATA Mavens. While diverse in style, many of their works display a striking engagement with language. Bang choreographer David Parker interprets Pauline Kim Harris’s Sparkle Too with 10 pointe and eight tap shoes, and caps the evening with his witty Schlemiezel, a duo for dancers in Velcro-covered suits.

Friday, May 22 (7 pm): Night Two: Intuitive Music

MATA Mavens / Unnameable Strings 

The DiMenna Center

Like the rugmakers he so admired, Feldman eschewed formal systems, preferring to work intuitively. Strings take center stage in this program of extended-duration works. Unnameable Strings perform an eponymous piece by ensemble members Ana Luisa Diaz de Cossio and Jennifer Gersten, scored for four violins, viola, three cellos, and bass. Zosha Warpeha performs Basalt on the Hardanger d’Amore, a modern Norwegian instrument with five bowed and five sympathetic strings, joined by co-composer Tristan Kasten-Krause on contrabass. Composer/cellist Laura Raquel Cetilia performs her Layers Turn Liquid with fellow cellist Julie Kim, plus Marilyn Nonken and Taka Kigawa on pianos. Nonken and Kigawa join violinist Conrad Harris for the evening’s final piece, Bunita Marcus’s mesmerizing Two Pianos and Violin.

Saturday, May 23 (7 pm): Night Three: Local Music 

BlackBox Ensemble
The DiMenna Center

‘Local music’ refers to Feldman’s focused exploration of isolated, quiet, and intimate sound moments – the "local" action of a single note or chord over the overall structure, creating a physical sound-world that emphasizes the tactile, immediate properties of sound. The seven-member BlackBox Ensemble (flute/clarinet/piano/percussion/violin/cello/voice), conducted by Leonard Bopp, plays finely detailed scores by Laila Arafah, Erich Barganier, Kristupas Bubnelis, Gillian Rae Perry, Floriana Provenzano, and Jessica Shand. Like Feldman, they often draw inspiration from literature, philosophy, and visual media. Rounding out the program are two iconic works by Feldman from the 1970s: For Frank O’Hara, and I Met Heine on the Rue Fürstenberg. 

A B O U T   M A T A

Music at the Anthology (MATA) is an incubator for adventurous emerging artists experimenting with composition, multi-media, collaborative performance art, and every imaginable sound in between. We present, support, and commission the music of early-career composers, regardless of their stylistic views or aesthetic inclinations. Founded by Philip Glass, Eleonor Sandresky, and Lisa Bielawa in 1996 as a way to address the lack of presentation opportunities for unaffiliated composers, MATA has since developed into the world’s most sought-after performance opportunity for young and emerging composers.

MATA presents an internationally-recognized festival each spring in New York City of new music by early-career composers selected from a free global call for submissions; MATA Presents, commissioned projects presented at venues and non-conventional spaces throughout New York; and MATA Jr., an evening of music by pre-college composers, mentored by emerging composers, and performed by top performers in new music.

MATA’s festivals and events are critically acclaimed and broadly respected: The New Yorker has hailed MATA as “the most exciting showcase for outstanding young composers from around the world.” The New York Times has called it “nondogmatic, even antidogmatic;” The Wall Street Journal said that it “tells us a lot about how composers are thinking now.” 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.” In 2010 MATA was awarded ASCAP’s prestigious Aaron Copland award in recognition of its work. Visit matafestival.org.

Back to Home Page