27th Annual MATA Festival Single Tickets Now Available

From June 11-14, 2025, MATA will present its 27th annual MATA Festival, this year in partnership with ISSUE Project Room, featuring four concerts across four nights exploring the concept of INTERGALACTIC INFINITY: Music Between Spaces – music that connects with the diaspora of ancestry and heritage, around ideas of imagination, mysticism, liberation, science fiction, history, fantasy, and technoculture.

The MATA Festival has been a much-anticipated fixture of the New York and worldwide new music scene since its founding in 1996 by Philip Glass, Eleonor Sandresky, and Lisa Bielawa, who established “Music at the Anthology,” now called MATA, as a means of providing early-career composers a platform for finding community and creating performance opportunities. Nearly 30 years later, MATA still serves as an incubator for adventurous emerging artists experimenting with composition, multi-media, performance art, and every imaginable sound in between. Its annual MATA Festival has become one of the most sought-after opportunities for young and emerging composers.

Curated by MATA Executive Director Pauline Kim Harris, the 2025 MATA Festival features works by 18 composers in the early stages of their professional careers, selected by Harris and a panel of eight esteemed composers and artists – Titilayo Ayangade, Tom Chiu, Felix Fan, John Glover, Conrad Harris, Max Mandel, Paula Matthusen, and Kal Sugatski – from a free, global call resulting in over 300 submissions.

Pauline Kim Harris has crafted four unique concert programs for the Festival that combine the works of these early-career composers with major works by six legendary artists – Jessie Cox (whose Enter the Impossible was written for and will be performed by Sun Ra Arkestra and FLUX Quartet), Oliver Lake, George Lewis, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, and Reza Vali. The 2025 MATA Festival performers include Sun Ra Arkestra, FLUX Quartet, Ensemble LPR conducted by Tito Muñoz, TROPOS, RE:duo, and the MATA Mavens to include Majel Connery, soprano; Oshay LeGare, baritone; Titilayo Ayangade, cello; Laura Cocks, flutes; Louis Arques, clarinets; Sam Nester, trumpet; Han Chen, piano; Erika Dohi, piano; Paul Kerekes, piano; Sam Yulsman, piano; and Josh Perry, percussion.

“This year's festival brings focus to a past and future of musical exploration by living legends, manifesting a legacy which continues to influence, inspire and impact generations of composers — grounded by the complexities and intersections of identity, race, history, and cultural ethos,” says MATA Executive Director Pauline Kim Harris. “Each night of the four-day festival is titled after a work by an iconic pioneer in the fabric of the American sound that makes up music today, performed by the illustrious FLUX Quartet and on opening night, Sun Ra Arkestra. Programs are further illuminated by the selected early-career composers, our very own MATA Mavens and invited guest artists and ensembles, igniting the intimacy of the experience, uniquely curated for a four-night journey. Attending the full festival is highly recommended.”

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.” For a full list of MATA Alumni, visit www.matafestival.org/mata-alumni.

This year's cohort of 18 composers includes:

• Diallo Banks is interested in sympathetic resonance, open scores, improvisation, and instrument modification. As a performer, his work pushes the Hammond organ's capabilities to its limits while still firmly engaging with its history as a sonic signifier of Black identity. His works have been commissioned and performed by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Yale Philharmonia, Aspen Contemporary Ensemble, Aspen Conducting Orchestra, and Contemporary Insights Ensemble in Leipzig, Germany. In the fall of 2025, he will begin his Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition at Columbia University.

• Anuj Bhutani is a first-generation Indian-American whose work is focused on liminal spaces, and as such is often highly interdisciplinary, engaging with theater, dance, and film while drawing on his musical background in classical, emo/screamo, ambient, singer/songwriter, and electronic music, resulting in genre- and culturally-fluid pieces that firmly situate the listener between multiple musical worlds at once. His music has been called "alternately celestial and dark" by WNYC's John Schaefer.

• 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. In her creative practice, Inga transforms personal stories into sonic expressions, reflecting a wide range of societal issues, including immigration, womanhood, and the environment. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Music and Multimedia Composition at Brown University.

• Rodrigo Espino is a Mexican composer and sound artist. His music is a visceral experience, produced and perceived through the entire body. The driving force behind his music emerges from the experience of epilepsy and physical pain, exploring the body's inability to voice itself as a catalyst for transforming convulsion into creative energy. His works have been presented at Mexico's most important venues, such as the Palacio Nacional de Bellas Artes, as well as in Brazil and Switzerland.

• Ledah Finck is a violinist, violist, improviser, and composer based in New York City. A passionate performer, creator, and curator of contemporary classical and experimental music, she is a co-founder of the Bergamot Quartet, as well as Tropos and earspace ensemble. As a composer, she has been commissioned by Imani Winds, Alarm Will Sound, Ayane and Paul, and more. Her music embodies a desire to create and share a sound-world in which the classical tradition, the folk music with which she grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and an extensive improvisatory sensibility, are in productive dialogue.

• Nina Fukuoka is a Japanese and Polish composer and performer based in New York City. She makes instrumental and computer music and uses various media and technologies to express extramusical meaning. Her works are focused on the contemporary world through the lens of horror esthetics, video games, and feminist scholarships. She explores the possibilities of communicating through art by superimposing latent meanings with distinct images within the context of tradition and mass culture.

• Kylan Hillman is a composer, guitarist, and improviser whose primary interest is destroying and scrambling material to investigate the beauty in imperfection. His music often includes visceral computerized glitches, novel approaches to traditional instruments, and harsh walls of noise. Kylan's recent output includes Methods of Crunching which uses objects like butterknives, screwdrivers, and guitar picks to create overwhelming scratching, popping, and rubbing sound. He is currently a Master's student studying composition at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

• New York City-based composer, pianist, and video artist Brian Mark has been hailed by the American Composers Forum as an “intelligent, modern composer who employs many media elements and does so with marked idiosyncrasy and depth.” He has had works performed by the BBC Singers, Chelsea Symphony, Pacific Chamber Orchestra, Psappha Ensemble, members of the London Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Signal, the Ligeti Quartet, and more. He completed his Ph.D. at the Royal Academy of Music and is also a graduate of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Berklee College of Music, and Boston University.

• Anna Meadors is a composer, saxophonist, electronic music 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 graduated from Peabody Conservatory with a B.M. in saxophone performance, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with an M.M. in Composition, and recently finished her Ph.D. at Princeton University in Music Composition.

• Giordano Bruno do Nascimento, born in Brazil, is a German composer distinguished by his profound artistic exploration of the role of the human voice in our society. Do Nascimento's artistic practice is dedicated to exploring the diverse meanings and functions of the human voice. These investigations frequently culminate in new works. His research also delves into the intersections of gender and voice, examining how vocal expressions can transcend traditional gender norms and contribute to a more fluid understanding of identity. Currently, do Nascimento is exploring “the boundaries of the human voice in its definitions” as part of his doctoral studies at the HfMT Hamburg.

• The "spellbinding" (Washington Post) music of Chicago-based composer Paul Novak immerses listeners in shimmering and subtly crafted musical worlds full of color, motion, light, and magic. His recent projects engage with dreams and memory, queer identity, climate change and the natural world, and psychosomatic illness. His music has been heard at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, New World Center, and Chicago's Symphony Center. Novak is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago.

• Sofia Jen Ouyang is committed to creating artwork that both expressively and critically engages with other people and the world. Her works have been performed across the US, Europe, and Asia, including in venues such as Lincoln Center, Frankfurt Oper, Columbia University Miller Theatre, Luzern KKL, Arvo Pärt Center, National Sawdust, New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall, and more. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Composition at Columbia University.

• Born in Puerto Rico, Luis Quintana is an internationally recognized composer based in France who extends the frontiers of his musical universe from concert music to acousmatic pieces and sound installations. Captivated by cultural fusions and their sonic expressions, he engages in an ongoing dialogue between diverse traditions, merging ancient heritages, natural soundscapes, and contemporary practices. He holds a Master's Degree from the Paris National Conservatory.

• Kevin Ramsay is a composer, producer, recording/mixing/mastering/sound engineer, and musician on several critically acclaimed international albums. Brooklyn born and based, Ramsay's work focuses primarily on theoretical, practical aspects of sound recording/reproduction with unpredictable pairings of acoustic and electronic instruments. Kevin's current works explore new ways to capture, mix, and process immersive audio for playback on multichannel sound systems.

• 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. Jee has been collaborating on a wide range of projects with artists, dancers, and filmmakers, and his collaborative music videos have been screened at festivals worldwide. He is currently a doctoral student at the Chopin University of Music in Warsaw.

• Negar Soleymanifar is an Iranian composer and performer currently based in Middletown, CT. She centers her work on an interpersonal perspective and its relationship to other human beings, exploring psychological states, inner struggles, and social contexts through her music, with the aim of communicating what seems uncommunicable. She holds a bachelor's degree in music composition from the Tehran University of Art and is pursuing an M.A. in music with a concentration in experimental music and composition at Wesleyan University.

• Andrew Stock is a composer and artist working in concert and installative formats with focus areas in experimental music, conceptual art, and Black studies. His work has been commissioned or programmed by groups and festivals including LA Phil/wild Up, Fonema Consort, Quince Ensemble, the New York Virtuoso Singers, the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, and Ostrava Days (CZ). He is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago.

• Petra Strahovnik is an internationally acclaimed composer and interdisciplinary artist, celebrated for her fearless exploration of sound and music. Her groundbreaking works blend music, performance, and visual art, drawing inspiration from societal issues and human experiences. She won the 66th International Rostrum of Composers Prize and her achievements also include a Fellowship and Art Residency at Villa Concordia in Bamberg, and the Berlin Art Prize for Music 2021.