Annual MATA Festival
In partnership with ISSUE Project Room
NIGHT TWO: THE CAPITOL
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.
Performing ARTISTS and ENSEMBLES
FLUX Quartet
The FLUX Quartet is a New York-based string ensemble founded in the late 1990s by violinist Tom Chiu, inspired by the experimental ethos of the Fluxus art movement. Renowned for their fearless approach to contemporary classical music, the quartet has premiered over 100 works by leading avant-garde composers such as Alvin Lucier, Wadada Leo Smith, Oliver Lake, and Julio Estrada. They are particularly acclaimed for their definitive performances and recordings of Morton Feldman’s string quartets, including the monumental six-hour String Quartet No. 2 .
FLUX has performed at prestigious venues like Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, the Kennedy Center, and international festivals across Europe, Australia, and the Americas. Their collaborations span diverse disciplines, including projects with choreographers Pam Tanowitz and Shen Wei, experimental balloonist Judy Dunaway, and digital art ensemble OpenEnded Group. They also appeared in Matthew Barney’s film River of Fundament .
Committed to nurturing emerging talent, FLUX has held residencies at institutions such as Wesleyan, Princeton, and Dartmouth, and has received support from organizations like the American Composers Forum and the Aaron Copland Fund .
Their discography includes releases on labels like Mode Records, Cantaloupe, Tzadik, and Cold Blue Music, solidifying their status as a leading force in contemporary string quartet performance.
TROPOS
Ledah Finck is a violinist, violist, improviser, and composer based in NYC. A passionate performer, creator, and curator of contemporary classical music, she plays violin with and is a founding member of the contemporary-music string quartet Bergamot Quartet. She participates regularly with a number of other ensembles as a performer and composer, including Tropos (“outer-space chamber music” quartet with a jazz/improvising foundation), Earspace (new music ensemble based in North Carolina), and Freddy & Sally (acoustic duo with Eli Greenhoe, playing original folk-inspired songs). Always seeking playfulness and community in her artistic pursuits, Ledah’s roots in the Blue Ridge Mountains have shaped her creative philosophy and aesthetic.
She has completed studies at the Banff Centre, the Lucerne Festival, Ensemble Moderne’s Klangspuren Academy in Austria, the Aspen Music Festival, and Bang on a Can among others. She holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in violin performance and composition from the Peabody Conservatory, where she studied with Herbert Greenberg, Oscar Bettison, Judah Adashi, and Mike Formanek. In 2022, she graduated from Mannes School of Music’s Graduate String Quartet in Residence fellowship with Bergamot Quartet, mentored by JACK Quartet. She plays a violin, viola, and hardanger d’amore all made by her father, David Finck.
Program note:
The Best Donuts in Pennsylvania is a piece I wrote for Tropos’ upcoming release Switches, a full length album coming out June 27 on Endectomorph Music. When composing for Tropos, I know I have full license to lean into playfulness, creativity, and challenge: my bandmates are ferocious improvisers and brilliant composers themselves. The score for The Best Donuts in PA consists primarily of a single stave of music with different colored noteheads allowing the players to orchestrate at will, and a flexible repeat structure that allows us to find adventurous pathways through the piece. I wrote it in Kutztown, PA, inspired by a really wild donut shop.
Backline:
Piano
Possible amplification for violin (I can supply everything other than the PA/mixing board).
RE:DUO
RE:duo (“Reply Duo”) engages audiences with innovative programming that blurs the lines between artistic disciplines. Consisting of saxophonist, Wilson Poffenberger, and violist, Elsie Bae Han, the duo formed following an interdisciplinary collaboration exploring the intersection between sound and movement. RE:duo has since expanded its repertory to include works that feature performative elements such as theater, improvisation, movement, and speech. With a principal objective of elevating and connecting with other artists, both duo members founded and hold executive positions with New Music Mosaic, a new music collective dedicated to the promotion of a more equitable musical community through the performance, creation, and dissemination of new music by artists of diverse backgrounds and identities. Through New Music Mosaic, RE:duo curates a series of concerts across the U.S. as a part of their open call for scores initiative.
Most recently, RE:duo completed their first major Call for Collaborators as the ensemble in residence at New Music Mosaic. The composers selected represent the diverse range of new music RE:duo strives to present to their audiences including music that incorporates free improvisation, Brazilian influences, mechanical props, and more. Recognized nationally and internationally, RE:duo has performed at conferences and institutions such as the Composers Conference, the International Saxophone Symposium, the Cortona Sessions for New Music, the North American Saxophone Alliance Biennial Conference, Avaloch Farms Music Institute, Florida State University, Bowdoin College, Georgia State University, the University of Georgia, the University of North Texas, and the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
Featured COMPOSERS
Wadada Leo Smith
Wadada Leo Smith is an American trumpeter, composer, and avant-garde jazz pioneer, known for his innovative contributions to creative music and free jazz. Born on December 18, 1941, in Leland, Mississippi, he emerged in the 1960s as a key figure in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). Smith’s work blends jazz, blues, and contemporary classical elements, often incorporating political and spiritual themes. He is acclaimed for his unique compositional system called Ankhrasmation, a symbolic language for improvisation and composition. Over his long career, Smith has released numerous influential albums, including Ten Freedom Summers, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Program Note “String Quartet No. 17 (The Capitol, Washington D.C.: An Experiment With Democracy and Capitalism)“
For his forthcoming String Quartet No. 17, Wadada Leo Smith has chosen the U.S. Capitol building as its theme, recognizing both an edifice of democracy and a site of gridlock and violent insurrection. Smith’s previous string quartet, introduced in June, was dedicated to the passengers of United Flight 93, the airliner that was hijacked and crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11. And the String Quartets Nos. 13 through 15 are meditations on the corresponding amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Presenting a roiling assortment of people, events, and landmarks in American history, Smith’s quartets have been gaining wider notice. String Quartets Nos. 1–12 are featured on a new box set on TUM Records, performed by the RedKoral Quartet, a group he formed in 2013 for the purpose of presenting his string works. Included on the set are quartets dedicated to civil rights figures (Angela Davis), pioneering Black musicians (George Walker, Louis Armstrong), writers (Haki R. Madhubuti), and members of his own family.
These tend to be abstract, non-narrative portraits, and hardly anyone’s idea of programmatic music. As a conversationalist, however, the 80-year-old Smith is eager to take questions and deliver succinct stories and pronouncements.
Roscoe Mitchell
Roscoe Mitchell is an internationally renowned musician, and composer. His virtuosic resurrection of overlooked woodwind instruments spanning extreme registers, visionary solo performances, and assertion of a hybrid compositional/improvisational paradigm have placed him at the forefront of contemporary music. Mr. Mitchell is a founding member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), and the Trio Space. He is also distinguished as the founder of the Creative Arts Collective, The Roscoe Mitchell Sextet & Quartet, The Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble, The Sound Ensemble, The New Chamber Ensemble, and the Note Factory. He is also Emeritus Darius Milhaud Distinguished Chair of Composition at Mills College (California) where he taught from 2007 to 2018.
In 2024 he was elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Department of Music. In 2025 received the inaugural Vanguard Award from Chamber Music America. Additionally in 2025, he was honored by the Jazz Foundation of America in the inaugural cohort of the Jazz Legacies Fellowship.
His instrumental expertise includes the gamut of the saxophone and recorder families, clarinets, flute, piccolo, and the transverse flute in addition to his elaborate invention, the Percussion Cage. His oeuvre boasts hundreds of albums. His vast discography includes “Sound” (1966, 5-star review in DownBeat Magazine), “People in Sorrow” (1969, with the AEOC), “Nonaah” (1977, DownBeat Magazine Record of the Year), “Bells for the South Side” (2017, featured as one of the NYTimes's best jazz albums of the year) and “Discussions” (distinguished on the NYTimes's list of 2017's best classical albums).
Mitchell’s honors include the 2020 NEA Jazz Master Fellowship, the United States Artist Award (2019), ASCAP Founders Award (2018), Multiple Reeds Player of the Year: Jazz Journalists Association Jazz Awards (2023 & 2018), Album Art of the Year: Jazz Journalists Association (2024), Doris Duke Artist Award and Audience Development Fund (2014), a CMA Presenting Jazz grant (2010), Golden Ear Award, Deep Listening Institute (2009),The Shifting Foundation Grant, Meet the Composer, and the John Cage Award for Music-Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, Inc.
Mitchell’s works are frequently presented by orchestras and ensembles worldwide. Most recently, He has completed several commissions including “CARDS In 3D Colors” for Violin & Piano (Kate Stenberg & Sarah Cahill commission) 2020; Mutable Music commissions: “Sustain and Run” for Orchestra and Solo Improvisors 2020, two pieces of a three-song cycle of Bob Kaufman poems: “To My Son Parker, Asleep in the Next Room” 2020 and “WHO HAS SEEN THE WIND?” 2020 For Baritone and Piano (the third piece will be based on the Kaufman poem “Scene in a Third Eye”); Creative Arts Collective commissions funded by New Music USA: “CARDS: The Detroit Deck” 2020, “CARDS: 11-11-2020” 2020 and “CARDS: The Maple just turned Red”2020; Commissions for the Metropolis Ensemble (combined ensembles of Immanuel Wilkins Quartet and The Ruckus Ensemble): “LADY MOON” 2021 for the Ruckus Ensemble on Baroque Instruments, “O’CAYZ CORRAL Part Two” 2020 for the Immanuel Wilkins Quartet on modern instruments, “Metropolis At 440 Oakwood Drive” 2020 for the combined Metropolis Ensemble. Additionally, he celebrated two 50-year anniversaries this decade: the AACM's in 2015, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago's in 2019.
Active as a visual artist since 1963, with a hiatus in the 1970s and '80s when he concentrated on musical composition, Mitchell was afforded time off-road during the pandemic, in which he began painting very avidly, resulting in a large body of intricately composed, jubilantly colorful, playful works. His recent canvases—including a series of compositionally complex four-by-four foot works—as well as the earliest of his paintings were featured in The Keeper of the Code: Paintings 1963-2022, a retrospective exhibition mounted early in 2023 at Corbett vs. Dempsey gallery in Chicago, Illinois. This was Mitchell's first solo show, and it was accompanied by a 140-page catalog. Last year, Mitchell had his second solo exhibition from June 15 to July 27, 2024 at The Pit gallery in Los Angeles, California.
Program Note “9/9/99 WITH CARDS“
I discovered in my teachings of improvisation to inexperienced improvisers that many musicians were repeating the same mistakes. For example: knowing what to play, maintaining their individuality throughout the improvisation, following other ideas being presented during the improvisation (which is the same as being behind on a written piece of music).
I set out to find a way to address these mistakes, which led me to compose the scored improvisation “CARDS.”
9/9/99 is a composition that has both notated sections and scored-improvisational sections. Each player is given a set of six cards with notation on them that can be arranged into different hands. Players are asked to play these hands at their own individual tempos, re-shuffle these hands, play the re-shuffled hands and continue this process until the end of the improvisation. Players may also choose the times when they are playing and when they are resting. I should also mention that once players have learned their hands they have the option of shuffling their “CARDS” mentally.
Early-Career COMPOSERS
Ledah Finck
Ledah Finck is a violinist, violist, composer, and improviser based in New York City, celebrated for her dynamic presence in contemporary classical and experimental music. She co-founded the Bergamot Quartet, an ensemble dedicated to performing works by living composers. The quartet served as the Graduate String Quartet in Residence at the New School from 2020 to 2022, receiving mentorship from the JACK Quartet.  
Finck’s compositional voice blends classical traditions with Appalachian and Celtic folk influences, jazz manouche, and improvisation. Her works have been commissioned by ensembles such as Imani Winds, Alarm Will Sound, and The Peabody Community Chorus. Notably, her piece “In the Brink,” written for the Bergamot Quartet and percussionist Terry Sweeney, received support from New Music USA.  
A native of Boone, North Carolina, Finck holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in violin performance and composition from the Peabody Conservatory, where she studied under Herbert Greenberg, Oscar Bettison, and Judah Adashi. She performs on instruments crafted by her father, luthier David Finck. 
Beyond the Bergamot Quartet, Finck is involved with ensembles like The Witches, a flute-violin duo exploring improvisation and social themes, and earspace, a contemporary music ensemble based in Raleigh, NC. Her solo albums, Mayfly (2020) and outside songs (2022), showcase her genre-defying artistry and are available on Bandcamp.
Inga Chinilina
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.
Inga’s research explores how cultural context shapes our perception and representation of auditory experiences by analyzing how composers evoke sounds from our everyday lives within their compositions. In her creative practice, Inga transforms personal stories into sonic expressions, reflecting a wide range of societal issues, including immigration, womanhood, and the environment.
Inga’s music has been performed by ensembles such as the Jack Quartet, ICE, Dal Niente, and Talea, and featured nationally and internationally at festivals including the Composers Conference, Zeitströme Tage für aktuelle Musik, ClarinetFest in Dublin, and the Japan Percussion Association Festival. Inga’s work has been recognized with awards and commissions, including winning the Flute New Music Competition, the Prisms Festival, and an upcoming Fromm Foundation commission, set to be presented in 2027 with the Switch Ensemble.
Currently a PhD candidate in Music and Multimedia Composition at Brown University, Inga holds a BM in Composition and Jazz Piano Performance from Berklee College of Music and an MFA in Theory and Composition from Brandeis University.
Program Notes “Shock Workers 2024”
8min
Viola, saxophone, max MSP, motors with mallets
The title "Shock Workers" refers to the early 20th-century movement of highly productive laborers who, driven by ideological motives, significantly increased their daily output. This composition reflects on the profound impact of industrialization on humanity and the resulting relentless labor. In the surge of AI, machines not only challenge mechanical labor but also intellectual and creative pursuits. As machines compel us to increase our workload, are they aids or competitors? The piece doesn’t answer that question, but portrays individuals grappling with mechanized pressures, expressing both resilience and vulnerability in a world increasingly shaped by efficiency. It explores the complex relationship between progress and its human costs, prompting contemplation of how humanity adapts to and endures in an era of technological advancement. Themes of perseverance and adaptation resonate throughout "Shock Workers," inviting listeners to engage with a musical narrative that mirrors the complexities of contemporary existence. Mechanical design and programming of the motors were made in collaboration with Eli Backer.
Kylan Hillman
Kylan Hillman (b. 1997) is a composer, guitarist, and improviser whose primary interest is destroying and scrambling material. His music often includes visceral computerized glitches, sounds reminiscent of antiquated media like vinyl records and cassette tapes, novel approaches to traditional instruments, and harsh walls of noise. Kylan is interested in exploring both electronic and human failure. Much of his work deals with the imperfections of human perception, and the limits inherent in digital and analog electronic media.
Kylan is also a digital instrument designer who has created a variety of effects processing units based on augmenting and dissecting incoming audio including Data Crasher which inspired the piece Methods of Crunching.
Kylan’s music has been played by internationally acclaimed musicians such as the Attacca Quartet, Hypercube, Josh Modney of the International Contemporary Music Ensemble and Wet Ink Ensemble, and Loadbang. Kylan has also worked alongside artists such as Trevor New, Stephanie Batten Bland, and Daniel Bernard Roumain.
Program Notes:
Methods of Crunching, composed in 2023, was created to explore a noise based, improvisatory sound language for electric guitar as well as demonstrate the effects processing unit, Data Crasher which is a multi-parameter, randomized stutter effect that plays back and reiterates small amounts of sound from the signal it receives. The piece explores a variety of scraping and sliding sounds which the performer creates using a pick, the metal of a screwdriver, and a butterknife. Methods of Crunching is approximately 6 minutes in length. For tech and backline, I need a guitar stand, a small table to put my laptop, audio interface, and guitar playing tools on, and a stereo DI.
Anna Meadors
Anna Meadors is a composer, saxophonist, 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 has compositions on albums by Party of One (Madefor records), clarinetist Andy Hudson (Potenza Records), percussionist Evan Chapman, and Consortium Works (people places records). As a saxophonist, she is lead soloist in the jazz-rock trio Joy on Fire, which has been called “a thrill of high voltage jazz ‘n’ roll” (All About Jazz) and has been featured twice on Bob Boilen’s All Songs Considered, NPR. Anna has engineered and co-produced the last three Joy on Fire albums, has filmed and edited two of their recent music videos, and is currently working on a solo saxophone and electronics album. Anna recently finished her Ph.D. at Princeton University in Music Composition and is the Assistant Director of Columbia University’s Computer Music Center, where she teaches classes on electronic music composition,production and recording.
Title: Encircle, recirculate (2025) 10'
Saxophone and No-Input Mixer
World Premiere
Program Note:
My creative practice focuses on improvisation and exploration, using both familiar and unconventional tools to discover and play with sounds. Recently, the no-input mixer has become a key element in my work. Its unpredictable, chaotic nature aligns with my approach to music: embracing spontaneity and finding beauty in the unexpected.
This piece is a structured improvisation for no-input mixer and saxophone, where feedback loops and distortion interact with the saxophone's signal. It is a duet between unruly circuitry and myself.
Jee Seo
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. His music was released by Ablaze Records, Phasma Music and Deus Ex Musica, and was broadcast by Estonian Radio (ERR), Radiofabrik in Salzburg and Hawaii Public Radio. Jee has been collaborating on a wide range of projects with artists, dancers and filmmakers, and his collaborative music videos have been screened at the 31th Girona Film Festival GIFF (Girona, Spain), Echofluxx International Festival of Experimental Film, Music, Dance and Poetry (Prague, Czech Republic), 10th Gujarat International Film Festival (Gujarat, India) and The Psychedelic and Transpersonal Film and Music Festival (New York, NY). He is currently a doctoral student at the Chopin University of Music in Warsaw.
Program Notes “On Fever 2017“
4’ 10”
Solo violin
I truly believe that rhythm (more precisely, groove) is the most powerful and crucial element of music. Rhythm is the universal musical language which transcends space and time. Based on this belief, I have been addicted to diverse ethnic music from around the world for many years just like a treasure hunter. And, I have been trying hard to experiment with my musical experience to develop a unique, attractive, and new groove. My solo piece series On Fever is a notable example.
The potential of new groove, energetic pieces mixed freely with multiple musical heritages, while maintaining universality. These are my desire for On Fever.
Brian Mark
Brian Mark is an award-winning composer, pianist and video artist who is basedin Brooklyn, NYC, and has been hailed as an “attractive and intelligible” artist (BostonMusical Intelligencer). Brian is also the artistic director of "Ensemble in Process,"which has recently been described as “a fluid approach to presenting new musicin fresh contexts and juxtapositions” (The New Yorker). Brian has had worksperformed by ensembles such as the BBC Singers, Chelsea Symphony, Pacific ChamberOrchestra, Psappha Ensemble, members of the London Symphony Orchestra, AtlasEnsemble, Ensemble Signal, the Ligeti quartet, and at festivals including Bang on a Can,London Contemporary Music Festival, Bowling Green, June in Buffalo, i=u, andSpitalfields.
Brian has received awards and grants from New York Council on the Arts,American Prize, New Music USA, Brooklyn Arts Council, Grammy Foundation, JeromeFund, Mozaik Philanthropy, and ASCAP. He has held residencies with the ChelseaSymphony, i-Park, mudhouse, and the Ucross Foundation. He has received anHonorable Mention from the 2015 American Prize in OrchestralComposition, and was awarded one of the top ten prizes from Mozaik’sPhilanthropy’s “Future Art Awards” Competition for works created inresponse to COVID-19. His debut LP album, Eleven to One (11/21) was releasedby Off Latch Press in Mary of 2022. He completed his PhD at the Royal Academy ofMusic, studying with Gary Carpenter, and is also a graduate of the San FranciscoConservatory of Music, Berklee College of Music, and Boston University.