2022 MATA Festival
NIGHT 1 Artist Bios

Laura Brackney

Laura Brackney is a doctoral candidate in Music Composition at Arizona State University. She views composing as a form of sonic gardening, cultivating each work’s interrelationships and sounds as ecosystemic material. Recently, her practice is most concerned with exploring timbral, textural, and temporal extremes and liminalities. Brackney is currently serving as the Composer-in-Residence for the Arizona State University Wind Ensemble. In addition to traditional concert music, she has created music for theater, film, fixed media, and bicycle installations. Her work has been commissioned by the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, the Bullock Texas State History Museum, the Blanton Museum of Art, the 78th Anniversary of the UT Kniker Carillon, the New Media Art and Sound Summit, the Portland Youth Philharmonic, and Collide Arts, among others. Brackney’s work has been premiered at the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium, the Look and Listen Festival by Grit Collaborative + Oh My Ears, and has been performed by groups such as the AURORA trio, Gamelan Lipi Awan, and Quince Ensemble. In 2020, her string quartet Desertification won 1st Prize in the Mykytyn Distinguished Composition Award. She earned her Master of Music in Composition at Texas State University, her BM in Theory and Composition at Southwestern University, and previously served as the Co-Creative Director of COTFG, an arts nonprofit dedicated to diversifying Austin’s sonic ecosystem.

Program Notes

“Knots” seeks the dissolution of discrete sonic elements. Several musical parameters are treated as spectra and materials are stretched, explored, tangled and knotted together. This piece was composed in collaboration with bassist Kyle Motl during 2021.

Michele Cheng

Michele Cheng, a 1.5 generation Taiwanese American, is an interdisciplinary composer intertwining diverse media such as music, experimental theatre, and puppetry to engage with social issues and cultural identities. Through a journalistic approach to interview and research, she develops creative work that shines light on underrepresented narratives. Her works have been performed internationally at National Sawdust (US), CCRMA (US), ICMC (Chile), ISSTA (Ireland), SICMF (South Korea), Sonorities (UK), MANTIS (UK), NYCEMF (US), SEAMUS (US), eavesdropping (UK), New Music Gathering (US), LMCML (Canada), Young Composers Meeting (Netherlands), Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon (France), National Theatre & Concert Hall Taipei (Taiwan), among others. As an improviser-performer, Michele plays multiple instruments and self-built electroacoustic devices. She is a co-founder of the experimental pop duet Meoark and fff, an interdisciplinary improv collective led by feminist media artists. Michele has received grant from the New Music USA, scholarship from Atlantic Center for the Arts, and is currently a JACK Studio artist commissioned by the JACK Quartet and an author for the "Casting Light'' series by I Care If You Listen and the American Composers Forum.

Program Notes

“Doyennes' Diaries” portrays modern womanhood through a custom instrument processing household objects and narrated diaries contributed by four women identified artists. This version at the MATA Festival 2022 is a rendition of the initial solo performance, which was created in March, 2020 as a tribute to International Women's Day. Special thanks to Barbara, Simona, and Michi for sharing their voices.

Nina Fukuoka

Nina Fukuoka is a Japanese and Polish composer and performer based in New York City. Her focuses center on the intricacies of modern reality. She writes music to convey extramusical meanings which often verbalize her identity, questions of womanhood, and a place in this world. Nina’s works have been premiered at numerous festivals and venues in Europe, North America, and Japan, including Muziekgebouw aan’t IJ in Amsterdam, Codes festival in Lublin, Klangwerkstatt festival in Berlin, Warsaw Autumn, Sacrum Profanum in Krakow, and musikprotokoll in Graz. Her works have been performed by ensembles such as the Arthur Rubinstein Lodz Philharmonic Orchestra, Koninklijke Muziekkapel De Gidsen, orkest de ereprijs, Hashtag Ensemble, Ensemble Garage, Ensemble Adapter, Ekmeles, and Distractfold Ensemble. She completed her studies in composition and music theory from the Academy of Music in Lodz, Poland and the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, Belgium. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in Music Composition at Columbia University in New York, where she studies with Georg Friedrich Haas, George Lewis, Annie Gosfield, and Brad Garton. Her works inhabit a number of contemporary and experimental settings such as video scores and performance pieces with multimedia and live electronics, as well as orchestra and ensemble works. By maintaining collaborations with musicians, choreographers, dramaturgs, and film artists, Nina continues to explore new possibilities for multi-disciplinary art.

Program Notes

“Sugar, Spice, and All Things Nice”

A Woman’s Emotionality and Musicality. What does it mean? There are billions of us.
Anger mars beauty.
Who are our heroes? They are adult, strong, assertive, and relaxed. Or perhaps laughing unstoppably, overexposing emotions, and weary. 
Go ahead, smile. 
The undisputed majority of male composers in a music history textbook.
He‘s playing like a girl.
Should you correct and remedy the injustice we have encountered on our way to becoming musicians?
I’m sorry. I wasn’t being serious, obviously.

Nyokabi Kariũki

Nyokabi Kariũki (b. 1998) is a Kenyan composer and sound artist based between Kenya and the United States. Her sonic imagination is ever-evolving, with compositions ranging from classical contemporary & experimental music, to film, choral, pop, and explorations into sound art, electronics, and (East) African musical traditions. She performs as a classically-trained pianist of 17+ years, as a vocalist, and on instruments from the African continent, particularly the mbira and djembe. Her art seeks to bridge her diverse influences together into a mélange of accessible, evocative, and meaningful art. While still in the early stages of her career, Nyokabi’s works have been seen at around the globe, including at the Hearsay International Audio Festival (Kilfinane, Ireland) where she received the 2021 Hearsay ‘Art’ Award, the Melbourne Fringe Festival and the Out of Africa Film Festival (Nairobi, Kenya). Her concert music has been sought after by various ensembles and performers, with performances by Third Coast Percussion to commissions from Tetractys New Music, the Brooklyn Youth Chorus Men’s Ensemble, and more. Her debut EP, ‘peace places: kenyan memories’ was released digitally and on vinyl in February 2022 via UK-based label, SA Recordings. While Nyokabi continues to explore music and its impact in different ways, she is ultimately driven by a constant yearning to explore sound as a tool to not only re-discover the stories of her culture, but also to highlight its significance, and contribute to the preservation of African stories.

Program Notes

“The Color of Home” is an audiovisual work inspired by 3 maternal figures raised on different soils — El Salvador, Kenya, and the Philippines — but are connected by their stories of immigration to America. The voices you will hear are from interviews with them, where we asked questions like — “What colors remind you of home? What was the moment it first hit you that you’d left everything behind? And what do you hope for your children as they grow up here, in America?” Told through the lens of Spanish, Kikuyu, Tagalog and English, the piece seeks to honor the journey and sacrifice of immigrant parents, and to reflect on how ‘home’ can have several meanings at once. The piece was commissioned by Tetractys New Music and includes video by Gabriella Segovia-Breaux and percussion performance in the fixed electronics by Chris O’Leary.

Shara Lunon

Shara Lunon is the product of the evolution of Black American musical traditions. As a poet, vocalist, composer, and improviser, her art finds the ethereal in the chaotic. With voice as the foundation, Shara’s music is an exploration of text and sound that seamlessly weaves through the ceaseless relationship of struggle, resilience, and resolution. Her goal is to challenge lassitude and in its place, instill hope. Shara has performed with leading improvisers including Darius Jones, and members of the International Contemporary Ensemble. Her work has been featured in The Gothamist, by the Metropolis Ensemble, and has won residency with Amanda + James production company, and the 2022 Audiofemme Agenda Grant.

Program Notes

The Sample Series is a set of text-based scores created by Shara Lunon as a way to stimulate autonomy and introspection in performers through simulating the grid selection process of an MPC. Each piece has set instructions and a soundbank in which to express the given concept. The point is to have an explicit focus on the context from the perspective of the ensemble so that they convey a personal journey through the theme. 

“I wanted to create pieces for musicians to get closer to their personal truths; to explore feeling through limitations and structure. So often do performers receive music and not place themselves in the context of why and where it is written, who it was written for, and how it should be presented. I wanted to make that impossible to ignore. Music shouldn’t always be a found object for skill demonstration, but for touching parts of ourselves and connecting to the intangible.”

In “Why I Believe Womyn” the ensemble is asked to select a text to read and ingest– Simone White’s “Preliminary Notes on Street Attacks” from Of Being Dispersed, an excerpt from Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, an excerpt from Anita Hill’s response to an interview by Rebecca Traister for Intelligencer, and an excerpt from Christine Blasey Ford’s transcript from her opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee– and then structure their improvisation from their emotional response. This piece creates an environment of empathy, authenticity, and a tribute to the resilience of womyn.

Fernanda Aoki Navarro

Fernanda Aoki Navarro is a composer of acoustic and electroacoustic music, developing concert music, intermedia works, performance art and installations. She is interested in sound, in the idiosyncratic relationship between the corporeality of the performers and the physicality of their instruments, in the exploration between music and language, the use and misuse of technology, and in the transformational power that experimental music can exert on issues related to feminism and social otherness. At Harvard University, she was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. There she continued her research on intermedia environments, involving acoustic and electroacoustic music, projection mapping, tracking devices, issues related to embodiment, anatomy, ergonomics, privacy and mass surveillance. Fernanda studied composition at Universidade de São Paulo in Brazil, completed her masters at UC Santa Cruz, and her PhD at UC San Diego. Her music has been performed nationally and internationally by soloists and ensembles such as NY Philharmonic, International Contemporary Ensemble, Talea, Yarn/Wire, Fonema Consort, Gnarwhallaby, Platypus, and Nadar, among others. She’s also engaged with promoting experimental music, working as an organizer and curator of concerts and music festivals, such as Springfest, FIME, PRISMS New Music Festival, and the XX concert series. Fernanda is also an educator, working as assistant professor at Arizona State University teaching music composition. Fernanda doesn’t like to be reduced to her gender, doesn’t know how to samba, procrastinates to write program notes, doesn’t know how to react to compliments or critiques, goes to the cinema every week, and drinks coffee every day.

Program Notes

“Unnoticed Spectacles” had many false starts. My first idea, in 2020, was to create a somewhat megalomaniac multimedia chamber opera. That idea was completely abandoned because the world turned upside down – we were afflicted by a global pandemic – and I saw no good reason to continue writing that piece. The second attempt came a year later, when I tried to adapt to the new mode of creating and consuming live music: online. Eyes on a distracting glowing rectangle; ears on cheap audio devices (that can only encompass so much of the sonic experience); hands anxiously scrolling through comments that are half words, half emojis; our brains trying to survive the overload of information and sadness. That was not the right medium for me. Additionally, music-making in this online environment was heavily dependent on people’s ability to be aggressively present on social media, a skill that I have no stomach for. So, my second attempt to compose this piece also failed. My failures and the experiences accumulated throughout the past two years informed many decisions taken in this piece. The first movement, Empty Hall is a reflection on the need for isolation and its revelatory power; it’s an inward movement.  In contrast, Still life with open window looks outwardly: past, future, nature, movement, sounds and other people are outside. The third movement Watermelon features text by Clarice Lispector (a Brazilian writer born in Ukraine) which – in my interpretation­ – talks about the absurdity of being alive, the power that normality has to corrode our lives, and the horrifying beauty of being perplexed.

Hakan Ulus

Hakan Ulus (b. 1991 in Germany) is a composer, researcher and professor of composition and music theory at the Gustav Mahler Private University in Klagenfurt, Austria. He studied composition in Salzburg, Leipzig, Frankfurt and Huddersfield. His music is performed internationally by Ensembles such as Ensemble intercontemporain, and Klangforum Wien. He has received several prizes and stipends, such as the impuls international composition prize, the stipend of the Academy of Arts Berlin, and the Staatsstipendium Komposition from the Republic of Austria. He lives in Vienna and Klagenfurt.

Program Notes

The title of the work refers to the novel Auslöschung (1986) by Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. As in many of Bernhard's novels, overcoming the provenance conflict is the main theme: eradicating provincialism, it is a plea for cosmopolitanism. In the "Bernhard blocks", text fragments from the novel are used, whereby it is not textual understanding that is important, but rather the inner-musical energy of the texts. The performance indication is "as fast as possible, incomprehensible, hissing, indistinct, breathless, fragile." The text dissolves into sound. The great inner tension of the text fragments is paired with the mysterious letters of the Qur'an (ḥurūf muqaṭṭaʿa), which exhibit the same energy. The musical energies of Bernhard's texts and the Qur'anic recitation are thus the most important two influences for the work. “Auslöschung II” is conceived as a poly-work on three levels: It is part of my Bernhard cycle, which consists of the four works Beton (2017/18) for a female voice with sound objects, four clarinets, and electronics, Auslöschung (2019) for bass with sound objects, Auslöschung II for 10 voices, and Karōshi for soprano with sound objects.

Chris Ryan Williams

Chris Ryan Williams is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York and most at home collaborating with improvisers and experimentalists. During his years in Los Angeles, Williams was mentored by multi-reedist Bennie Maupin whose teachings instilled a conviction in finding one’s own path in life through sound. Concurrently, he spent time in the community band Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra. These collaborations continue to influence his musical journey as a new addition to the New York creative community, one in which elders and young folk (in spirit, age, and experience) share a space in creation. Williams’ work explores the dyad of ancestral trauma and power existing in all Black Americans: I Ain’t Got No Spare (2019) is a modular video and performance piece that explores the rich legacy of Black music and film in Los Angeles; House of Peace (2021) is a video installation and soundscape blending fabricated and ‘real’ memories across generations; Of Yours (2020) is a free jazz setting for imagined exchanges between Black leaders. Williams’ recently released debut album ‘LIVE’, a sound-collage interpretation of a live set, can be found on the record label cow: Music. Recent grants and residencies include BANFF Centre for the Arts, Foundation of Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Atlantic Center for the Arts, WasteLAnd, and MATA Festival. Williams has collaborated with Bennie Maupin, Nicole Mitchell, Fay Victor, Luke Stewart, Joanna Mattrey, Miriam Parker, Patrick Shiroishi, and Wendy Eisenberg.

Program Notes

“From a historical point of view, in this hour of the world’s history, I have an advantage over you. Because I’m compelled (...) to doubt my history, to examine it, I’m compelled to try and create it.” –James Baldwin

In my piece “Of Yours”, we create history. We create it for now, as we must continue to create for our futures. If we do not, you will. And unfortunately, your history is often incongruous, if not entirely incompatible with our lives. In this new work I imagine exchanges which might have led to better futures, I present them in the hopes that we may head toward the best future. This piece has an urgency meant to inspire. Dr. John Henrik Clarke implores us not to “run from definition, what we need to look at [is] NOW.”

International Contemporary Ensemble

With a commitment to cultivating a more curious and engaged society through music, the International Contemporary Ensemble – as a commissioner and performer at the highest level – amplifies creators whose work propels and challenges how music is made and experienced. The Ensemble’s 35 members are featured as soloists, chamber musicians, commissioners, and collaborators with the foremost musical artists of our time. Works by emerging composers have anchored the Ensemble’s programming since its founding in 2001, and the group’s recordings and digital platforms highlight the many voices that weave music’s present. Now in its third decade, the Ensemble continues to build new digital and live collaborative environments that strengthen artist agency and musical connections around the world. Read more at www.iceorg.org and watch over 350 videos of live performances and documentaries at www.digitice.org.

Artists:
Doyennes’ Diaries
Improviser-Performers - Pala Garcia, Tamika Gorski, & Clara Warnaar

Unnoticed Spectacles
Bassoon - Rebekah Heller
Bass Clarinet - Joshua Rubin
Voice - Alice Teyssier
Flute - Laura Cocks

The Colour of Home
Solo Percussion - Nathan Davis
Fixed Media - Maciej Lewandowski

Knots
Solo Bass - Kyle Motl

Why I Believe Womyn
Bassoon - Rebekah Heller
Voice - Fay Victor

Sugar, Spice, and All Things Nice
Violin - Pala Garcia & Pauline Harris
Percussion - Clara Warnaar
Accordion - Lucie Vítková
Piano - Eve Werger

Staff:
Jennifer Kessler, Executive Director
George Lewis, Artistic Director
Ross Karre, Executive Producer
Eddy Kwon, Director of Individual Giving
Ryan Muncy, Director of Institutional Giving*
Keisha Husain, Business and Finance Manager
Bridgid Bergin, Director of Production & Communications
Isabel Crespo Pardo, Production & Communications Coordinator
Isabel Frye, Video Editor and Media Archive Coordinator
Jacob Greenberg, Director of Recordings**
Levy Lorenzo, Sound Engineer**
Joshua Rubin, Program Director of LUIGI and Emeritus Co-Artistic Director**

* Ensemble musician
** Part-Time Artist Staff

Luke Stewart

Luke Stewart is a critically acclaimed Brooklyn/DC-based musician and organizer of important musical presentations, with a strong presence in the national and international Improvised Music community. He is noted in Downbeat Magazine in 2020 as one of “25 most influential jazz artists” of his generation. He was profiled in the Washington Post in early 2017 as “holding down the jazz scene,” selected as “Best Musical Omnivore” in the Washington City Paper’s 2017 “Best of DC,” chosen as “Jazz Artist of the Year” for 2017 in the District Now, and in the 2014 People Issue of the Washington City Paper as a “Jazz Revolutionary,” citing his multi-faceted cultural activities throughout DC. In New York City, Luke collaborated with Arts for Art in hosting the first ever “Free Jazz Convention” to share resources and strategies among the community. He has also performed in a myriad of collaborations and performances in venues such as the Kitchen, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Issue Project Room, Pioneer Works, and Roulette. In 2021, he participated in artist residencies with Pioneer Works and Roulette. He is also an adjunct professor at the New School. Some of his regular ensembles include Irreversible Entanglements, Heroes are Gang Leaders, Ancestral Duo, Heart of the Ghost, and experimental rock duo Blacks’ Myths, as well as a myriad of new and continued collaborations and solo work.

Lester St. Louis

Born and based in New York, Lester St. Louis is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, improvisor, and curator working in New, improvised and experimental music, jazz, and sound design. His work deals with expansive instrumental technique, flow and real time synthesis. He has presented works in North America, China and Europe at venues and festivals such as The Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Borealis festival, Roulette, ISSUE Project Room, Cafe Oto, Lincoln Center, Walker Arts Center, Superblue, G Livelab, The Jazz Cafe, and more. Lester has been commissioned by the JACK Quartet, RAGE THORMBONES, Jennifer Koh, String Noise and And/Play among others. Lester has performed with artists Dré Hočevar, Joe Morris, Tyshawn Sorey, Nate Wooley, SZA, Chance the Rapper, Yaeji, Charmaine Lee, Chris Pitsiokos. Rob Mazurek, Tortoise, Don Byron, The Tri-Centric Orchestra, MOCREP, TAK, Lea Bertucci, Jaimie Branch, Aruan Ortiz, Alarm Will Sound, Metropolis Ensemble, Yo La Tengo and more. Lester can be heard in interviews on BBC Radio 3, The 5049 podcast, Worldwide FM, Radioštudent, and RTV Slovenia.