2023 MATA Festival
NIGHT 2 Artist Bios

Aaron Edgcomb

Aaron Edgcomb (he/they) is a composer, drummer, and percussionist from Reno, NV, currently living in Brooklyn, NY whose work appears in such contexts as improvisational music, jazz, “new music”, noise, and song. At the forefront of Aaron’s artistic practice is considering how music creates and changes ideology. Aaron has performed in and composed for ensembles including: the avant-rock band Clak; the solo percussion and electronics project REA; The Gown of Entry (an improvisational trio that incorporates poetry); and the improvising hardcore group Trigger. Aaron has performed extensively around the world at such venues as the MoMA PS1, National Sawdust, Roulette, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the North Sea Jazz Festival, the Sarajevo Jazz Festival, and the Jazz Em Agosto Festival in Lisbon; not to mention the uncountable and invaluable living rooms, garages, basements, and DIY venues that work so hard to keep creative music alive. Closely tied to their work as an improviser and composer is Aaron’s background in concert percussion. Aaron performs solo marimba, vibraphone, and multi-percussion works. In 2014 Aaron debuted his solo marimba composition “Dawn Has Appeared” as part of Ran Blake’s 80th birthday concert at the New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall. He has also performed orchestral works with the Reno Philharmonic Orchestra and Reno Chamber Orchestra. Currently, Aaron is composing new works for solo and ensemble performance (and occasionally poetry and prose) and teaching percussion/composition/improvisation.

Program Notes

L’amour:La Mort uses an interview with philosopher Jacques Derrida and a sample from an Abbey Lincoln recording of “When Autumn Sings” as jumping off points. The piece is about clarity and intent, and the difficulty of arriving at either. Derrida, in response to a prompt, asks the interviewer to clarify whether they had said the word “l’amour (love)” or “la mort (death)”, near homophones in French. This is a tantalizing, unintended, live action portrayal of Derrida’s concept of différance, in which difference establishes meaning and speech is privileged over the written word. The lyrics are inspired by an essay entitled “Un Plaisir si Simple” by Michel Foucault in which he muses on a psychiatric study linking suicide to homosexual communities. Foucault manages to elide love and death in a cheeky response to this outsider's perspective of sexuality, that death is chosen over love, mimicking the question Derrida asks of the interviewer. At play are numerous metaphors and clichés including la petite mort and Other identities as a kind of constant death. In the end, Derrida says that he cannot abstractly philosophize about the concept of love, that specificity is needed to discuss things without arriving at cliches, but I relish this moment of ambiguity. Undergirding the piece, Abbey Lincoln’s version of “When Autumn Sings” embraces the melancholy and reflection of change, loss, and love, but engages with the reversal and complexity of the issue. Her crucial voice ultimately cannot be ignored.

Performers: Aaron Edgcomb, Shara Lunon

Jenn Grossman

Jenn Grossman is a sound/experiential media artist & electronic composer based in Brooklyn, NY. She's concerned with the psycho-spatial, surreal, affective, and transcendent potentials of sensory media. Her work has taken the form of sound sculpture, audiovisual installation and performance, sound collage, light/video events, public interventions, ambient music, and spatial audio works. She's held residencies at I-Park Foundation, Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, presented audio works & research at festivals, museums and conferences such as the Black Mountain College Museum, the Museum of the Moving Image and the New York Transit Museum, the Megapolis Audio Festival, the Cistern Dreams at the Deep Listening Institute, the Global Composition Conference, the Women In/Women on Sound Symposium, galleries such as Microscope Gallery and Arete Gallery, venues like Spectrum NYC and Main Drag Music, and unconventional public locations for Make Music NY, such as the Central Park archways. This year, her audio work "Solar Plexus" will be presented on the Sonic Arts Research Center’s 48 channel Sonic Lab with the Irish Sound, Sciend, & Technology Association.

Program Notes

Meridian is a minimalist composition for brass, voice, and synth/electronics that explores emergence and recurrence through repetition, long tones/harmonies and a driving, tired pulse that hits ever so slightly behind the beat. Wandering but persistent, it seeks to convey a feeling of forward motion and discovery within the grind of reality -- always searching, yet perpetually returning to the same place.

Performers: Shara Lunon, Julia Santoli, Zekkereya El-magharbel, Chris Williams, Jenn Grossman

Ivy Alexander

Ivy Alexander is a Nairobi based guitarist player whose interest in the instrument was nurtured by the fact that she was born into a musical family. Her influences have been wide and still continue to grow but she does religiously listen to Jimmy DluDlu, Jonathan Butler, Paul Jackson Jr., Mateus Asato, Mark Lettieri, Kato Change and Benjamin Kabaseke; the latter of who are Kenyan powerhouses.

Her style draws from various influences, mainly RnB and African rhythms that is evident in her music. She released her debut single “Pacha” in July 2020 after being a Fellow in the US Department of State’s OneBeat music program (2019) a program that promotes musical cultural exchange and collaboration. Her debut project dropped in September 2021, a 6 track EP titled “Majira” that features solo performances, and well seasoned Kenyan acts that showcases Nairobi’s diverse musical and cultural landscape.

As member of numerous bands and recording projects, Ivy was selected by the British Arts Council to collaborate with a group of UK-based jazz musicians as part of the 2018 Safaricom International Jazz Festival. She has also taken part in international projects - Coke Studio Africa, as the house guitarist for the 2018/2019 season. She has played and recorded with great Kenyan musicians; Polycarp Otieno (Sauti Sol), Xenia Manasseh, Karun, Nviiri, Noel Nderitu, Rigga, June Gachui, Atemi Oyungu, Alice Kimanzi just to name but a few. She has performed in Ethiopia, Vietnam, Germany and the United States of America.

Program Notes

Pacha is an instrumental afro jazz fusion song. The piece was composed in 2019 and recorded at the Atlantic center for the Arts (Florida). It features Rodney Baretto on drums (Cuba), Jax Ravel on bass (Madagascar) and Manasseh Shalom on light vocals (Kenya). Pacha is Swahili for twin; I co-wrote it with my twin brother Ian Alexander.

Performers: Kayode Kuti (bass), Fola (drums), Akin (guitar)

Ben Richter

Ben Richter is a composer, accordionist, and director of Ghost Ensemble. Inspired by nonhuman consciousness, emergent perceptual horizons, and humanity’s transient yet vital role within the immensity of geologic time, Ben’s music seeks new orders of magnitude in musical parameters to auralize the vast and infinitesimal timescales we do not experience in everyday life. As a composer-performer, Ben explores the extended microtonal and timbral potential of the accordion through works such as the immersive just-intonation five-accordion composition Panthalassa: Dream Music of the Once and Future Ocean (2017), hailed by Stephen Smoliar as “likely to offer a profound impact on the very nature of listening.” Ensemble work Wind People (2016), “a multifaceted texture that evokes the primeval” (Meg Wilhoite), “cloudy, mysterious, and dark ... Beckettian in its slow spread” (Brian Olewnick), was featured on Ghost Ensemble’s debut LP We Who Walk Again, selected among Bandcamp Daily’s 10 Best Contemporary Classical Albums of 2018. A student of Pauline Oliveros, Ben holds a BA from Bard College, MM from the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and DMA from CalArts, and has taught at CalArts, CUNY, and the Center for Deep Listening. Current projects include an album of accordion and ensemble compositions with the Koan Quartet (Infrequent Seams, December 2023); new compositions for Loadbang and House on Fire Trio; and the experimental chamber opera Tides of the Wolf, in collaboration with author Edie Meidav and vocalist Carmina Escobar.

Program Notes

PANTHALASSA: Dream Music of the Once and Future Ocean

Panthalassa: Dream Music of the Once and Future Ocean was composed in 2016-17 and released in 2017 as a CD on the Infrequent Seams label. Originally a forty-five minute continuous work in three sections or movements, it has been condensed to a 16-minute version for the MATA festival. This is the first performance of the piece for the original instrumentation of five live accordions. The instruments are internally prepared by partially closing the reed valves, restricting airflow to allow wider pitch bends and microtonal intervals to be performed on up to several pitches at a time. Panthalassa’s first movement emphasizes the slow introduction of layers and development of just-intonation harmony, the second explores the interaction and juxtaposition of high tones and beating frequencies, and the third adds more extreme pitch bends that quiver and disintegrate into harmonics and wind sounds.

I. Rodinian (The Joining of the Seas)

Panthalassa, the great world-spanning ocean, began to form one billion years ago with the confluence of all the waters of Earth. Its supercontinental counterparts were Rodinia, Pannotia, and Pangaea, which in succession brought together all the land masses of Earth as Panthalassa joined its seas.

Before Panthalassa, the ancient continent of Nuna was surrounded by the primordial abyss of Nu, the Mother Ocean, source of all life. In the far future of Pangaea Ultima, the seas will once again come together in a new Panthalassa.

II. Cryogenian (The Glacial Planet Eon)

Seven hundred million years ago, the land and seas were trapped beneath a vast glacial ice sheet that blanketed the entire surface of the planet, from pole to equator. Still, the oceans circled slowly beneath the ice.

The end of the Cryogenian and retreat of the glaciers heralded the Cambrian Explosion and diversification of Earth’s life.

III. Changhsingian (Volcanic Waters of the Great Dying)

Panthalassa was at its largest around 250 million years ago, after the twilight of the great coal forests of the Carboniferous, in the boiling heat of the late Permian. Enormous gyres sent water courses churning through all corners of the planet, and extreme volcanism and climatic shifts sent temperatures soaring. Though the Permian ocean teemed with life, Panthalassa’s chemical composition changed greatly, starved of oxygen and flooded with methane and hydrogen sulfide. These changes precipitated the great extinction event in which nearly all life on Earth perished.

Performers: Nathan Koci, Aurora Nealand, Red Wierenga, Lucie Vitkova, and Melinda Faylor

DM R

A native of Bogota, DM R is an electroacoustic music composer based in New York City. Having its footholds in post spectral, ambient, pop culture, Colombian folk, and Rock en Español, their music has been presented by artists such as the International Contemporary Ensemble, Yarn Wire, Alarm Will Sound, ECCE Ensemble, counter)induction, Boston Musica Viva, Berrow Duo, Eric Drescher, and Josh Modney at venues like the BANFF Centre for the Arts and Creativity, the DiMenna Center for Classical Music, the Goethe Institut in Boston, Americas Society, University of North Colorado, the Coral Gables Museum, Boston Conservatory, and the New England Conservatory. Their recent projects include an electroacoustic installation piece for the National Sawdust Ensemble (NSE), part of the 2022 Hildegard Commission Initiative, an evening-length work for the New York-based trio Sputter Box commissioned by the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, a multimedia piece for the TAK ensemble and Joy Guidry, and a string duo for andPlay.

DM R is a dissertation fellow at Columbia University, a teaching assistant at NYU and teaches composition at Kaufman Center’s Face the Music.

Program Notes

Let It Burn (MATA Festival 2023 Commission World Premiere)

"If the forest scorches, let it burn. The stumps, the weeds themselves, will sprout again." - Etelvina Maldonado

Performers: Aurora Nealand, Melinda Faylor, Melody Feo, Lucie Vitkova

Alexander Noice

Alexander Noice is a composer, guitarist, bandleader, and producer based in Los Angeles. Noice has received critical recognition for his work as an improviser/composer displayed in a myriad of configurations including chamber ensembles, jazz/improvised ensembles, rock bands and music for film/animation. From 2008-2012 Alexander led the highly revered art rock/punk trio Falsetto Teeth, and in 2016 Noice released his first solo electronic album called "Music Made With Voices" in which he uses a single note sung by eight different people as the sole source material to create eight sonic portraits reflecting our modern relationships seen through a digitized prism. In 2014 Alexander started, NOICE, a six-piece ensemble that seamlessly melds art rock, electronica, post-minimalism, and jazz. The ensemble is celebrated for its electrifying live performances - “acrobatic in its execution and cinematic in scope.” Their 2019 debut album was met with critical acclaim by several media outlets nationally and internationally.

Alexander has performed throughout the world with many notable artists such as Charlie Haden, Wadada Leo Smith, Famoudou Don Moye, Tim Lefebvre, Vinny Golia, David Binney, Wild Up, Dorian Wood, and Daniel Rosenboom to name a few. He has performed his compositions and collaborated with other artists on stages from all corners of the musical landscape including Walt Disney Concert Hall, Redcat, Blue Note Tokyo, Blue Note Nagoya, the Troubadour, and the Hammer Museum, along with many festivals such as Sonar Tokyo, the Monterey Jazz Festival, Angel City Jazz Festival, Desert Daze Festival, and Green Umbrella at the LA Phil.

Program Notes

Ambit is a piece composed for two vocalists, alto saxophone, guitar, electric bass, drums, and triggered samples. The initial inspiration for this piece came about after watching a series of science fiction movies back to back, with an overlapping narrative in which humans are trying to find the extent of control when tampering with a novel piece of technology to serve a specific agenda. Of course, the idyllic outcomes for these technologies don't go as planned and the stories in these films follow the unexpected consequences and backlash that occurs. This was the central inspiration for the lyrics of this piece. The music itself attempts to set a sonic environment that invokes curiosity and the sense of optimism that might present itself when a new technology is developed, and then juxtapose that with a feeling of uneasiness and anxiety to reflect the emotional arch presented in these films as the “utopian” idealism goes array.

Performers: Matt Evans (drumkit), Tristan Kasten-Krause (bass), Leni Kreienberg and Starr Busby (vox), Anna Meadors (sax), Alexander Noice (electric guitar)

Corie Rose Soumah

Corie Rose Soumah is a composer born in Montreal and currently based in New York City. Her works have been performed in Canada, the U.S, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy. Her musical interests lie in shattered sounds realms through collage and gestural practices. She explores sonic textures through acoustic mediums and electronic and analog technologies. Her approach is part of an active redefinition of a new québécitude brought under the influence of cultural, sonic and aesthetic multiplicities.

Winner of a SOCAN Foundation Award, Soumah works have been performed by an extensive number of ensembles and performers. Some of them include Ekmeles, Instruments of Happiness, Hypercube, Flux Quartet, Sixtrum, Contemporary Insight, New Music Concerts, Orkest de Ereprijs, Paramirabo and Wet Ink. Her works have also been featured at the 24th Young Composer Meeting in the Netherlands, Italian soundSCAPE festival and highSCORE festival and the Domaine Forget at Charlevoix where she was composition fellow.

Soumah is currently pursuing a Doctoral degree in composition at Columbia University. Her teachers include Zosha Di Castri, Annie Gosfield, George Friedrich Haas, Marcos Balter and George Lewis. She completed a BMus degree in composition from the Conservatoire de musique de Montréal where she studied with Nicolas Gilbert, Jimmie Leblanc and Serge Provost. She has also worked with Chaya Czernowin, Trevor Grahl, Amy Beth Kirsten, Martijn Padding and Michel Tétreault.

Program Notes

SPINNING, TOUCHED, UNDREAMT; SNOW- explores the very complexities of womanhood and their subsequent layers of falsified dreams and exceptions. The piece is a large frisky, melted spiciness and drunken distorted song composed of a teenage fatigue and self-realization. ‘SPINNING…’ formed itself around my deep interest in soap TV shows from Korea. Korean Dramas have been my fiercest companion over the last thirteen years despite all the changes, twirls and growth that happened to me. I rely on my immense love for them to create sonic textures between acoustic and analog sounds. No second lead character or secret inheritor has been forgotten in the process of making this piece.

Performers: Jess Tsang (perc), Anna Meadors (sax), Sonya Belaya (piano), Niki Todesco (guitar)