2023 MATA Festival
NIGHT 3 Artist Bios

Che Buford

Che Buford (he, they) is an NYC-based artist whose work explores creating new narratives within the world of music while engaging in themes of memory and place. Che performs as a violinist in various musical settings such as, traditional orchestras, chamber music, solo, improvisational performance, and interdisciplinary collaborations. Their own work explores the possibilities of timbre and acoustical phenomena and connects them to elements of place, memory, poetry, and the quotidian. Che has had the privilege of creating with artists such as Longleash Trio, The Rhythm Method, New York Philharmonic, Katherine Needleman, mal sounds, Steph Davis, Veda Hingert-Mcdonald, and Deborah Jack. Che holds a degree from Boston Conservatory as a presidential scholar in violin performance where he studied with Rictor Noren. In the fall, He will begin his DMA in composition at Columbia University. When Che isn’t interacting with music, he enjoys taking long walks, cooking vegan food, and thrifting.

Program Notes

i said… is an exploration of human expression and the timbral possibility of the violin. As I wrote this piece, I envisioned a narrative of someone who struggles with self-expression. I was obsessed with tone and transformation: the idea of a crunchy, strained sound that becomes a healthy one. This was my starting point for expressing this narrative.

The work features a pre-recorded electronic track that includes violin sounds, voice effects, speech, and electronic sounds. The live violin and the electronic track collaborate, exploring feelings of repression, trepidation, and unease. This piece is a process of liberation from these feeling, beginning with a strained stammer, becoming fervent and free. The violin and voice inhabit unique colors. My intention is for the listener to recognize the visceral quality and similarities between the two throughout the arc of the piece.

This piece celebrates a unique collaboration between two violinists and composers who share an interest in improvisation, an interest that informed much of our process. My collaborator, Veda, created all the voice material in the track.

Performers: Che Buford

Jaehoon Choi

Jaehoon “Jason” Choi is a computer musician / sound artist / researcher based in New York and Seoul. His practice involves embodied experimentation through a technical medium, which involves both the making/design and the performative process. As a researcher, he is interested in understanding how technology-mediated practice affords distributed artistic activities as a community and its aesthetic implementation. At the same time, he does not distinguish research and practice as a strict binary and seeks ways to integrate those two organically. His works have been presented in ICMC, San Francisco Tape Music Festival, CeReNeM, ECHO Journal, ZER01NE, Art Center Nabi, EIDF, Visions Du Reel, CEMEC, Bing Concert Hall, etc. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Electronic Arts at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Program Notes

Brushing Improvisation is a free improvisational performance that aims to transform the nuanced materiality of the brush and brushing gestures into a musical/sonic expression through mediated technology. For the performance, I use the Brushing Interface, which is a self-made physical interface that detects the position and pressure of the brushing gesture and its sound in realtime. The improvisation is aroused from my deep inter-relation with the interface as a builder and the performer, and my body acts as a central role in this creative process.

Performers: Jaehoon Choi

Toh Yan Ee

Toh Yan Ee (b. 2000) is a Singaporean composer whose music fuses elements of spontaneity and organicity. Yan Ee’s music deals with dichotomies within nature - both the phenomena of our physical world, as well as the nature of things. Her works explore gestures through the amalgamation and morphing of timbres and harmonies.

Yan Ee has worked with musicians of TACET(i) Ensemble (TH), Orkest de Ereprijs (NL), Salastina Music Society (US), Les Percussions de Strasbourg (FR), Asian Cultural Symphony Orchestra (SG), Singapore Chinese Orchestra (SG), NOISE Ensemble (US), and ensemble chromoson (AT) amongst others. Most recently, her flute and bass clarinet duo “iridescent shadows” won the Boston New Music Initiative Young Composer Competition 2022 (US), Concertia 2021-2022 Emerging Composers Fellowship (US), Runner-Up of the Black Bayou Composition Award 2021 (US), and Special Mention at AMAT Women Composers Competition <femfestival> 2021 (IT).

Besides composing, Yan Ee is a pianist, chorister, and an avid arranger for various vocal and instrumental settings. She is also interested in arts management, and is keen to explore the curation and marketing of projects in the arts.

Program Notes

How often do we have lucid dreams, and how many of them do we still remember?

As a child, I experienced a number of bizarre dreams - they were short-lived, but out of this world, presenting the most eccentric combinations of fantasy and reality: Some were violent and explosive, others in a composed state of transience. While these dreams were not simply silent movies in my head, I hardly remembered the conversations or sounds associated with them. Over time, these dreams would return one after another in no particular order, like a playlist on shuffle. In attempts to change the storyline, I found myself speaking to the characters in my dreams, though often without any comprehensible reply.

Of Celestial Dreams is a recollection and reflection of my series of lucid dreams. It explores a diverse sound world featuring non-bowing techniques such as plucking and strumming, as well as intimate sounds such as harmonics and col legno battuto. Throughout the piece, five main motivic ideas are presented and repeated in three cycles, with a different order in which ideas are presented in each cycle.

Taking reference from Earle Brown’s String Quartet (1965), the piece adopts elements of free, aleatoric music, such as spatial notation and approximated durations, allowing for some flexibility in the performance of this work.

Performers: Aimee Niemann, Abby Swidler, Joanna Mattrey, Maria Hadge

Jimena Maldonado

Jimena Maldonado (b.1988) is a Mexican/Dutch composer based in The Hague. Having also studied Photography, she is interested in combining these two disciplines in order to achieve alternative forms of both composing and presenting her work. Jimena is also deeply interested in socially engaged artistic practices, as can be seen in her most recent work.

Jimena’s work has been performed by ensembles/musicians such as the Ligeti Quartet (UK), Jeffrey Zeigler (USA), Decibel ensemble (UK), Cuarteto José White (MX), Quinteto de Alientos de la Ciudad de México (MX), Rohan de Saram (UK), Orkest de Ereprijs (NL), BlackBox Ensemble (USA), Bozzini Quartet (CAN), and HD Duo (AUS), in festivals such as the Manuel Enríquez International Festival of New Music (MX), Le Tout-petit festival musical (FR), Open Circuit Festival (UK), Dag in de Branding (NL), Aires Nacionales (MX) and Fem Fest (NL), among others. In 2020, she won the prestigious Hildegard Competition of the National Sawdust in New York City, for which she was commissioned a new piece which was premiered in March 2021 in New York.

Jimena completed a BA in Composition and Music Theory at the Research and Music Studies Centre (CIEM) in Mexico City and holds an MA in Composition from the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. She recently completed a PhD at the Birmingham Conservatoire, with the support of CONACYT-FINBA (MX). Jimena currently works as a freelance composer and a Lecturer at the Prins Claus Conservatorium.

Program Notes

Repeat their names was inspired by an event that happened during the International Women’s day protests of 2021 in Mexico City, where the fencing erected by the government to “protect” Mexico's National Palace ahead of a planned march to mark International Women's Day was turned into a memorial. Feminist groups gathered the names of hundreds of women who have been murdered in Mexico, and painted them on the 3-metre high barriers. Using thousands of names of both murdered and disappeared women in Mexico, this piece is a sonic representation of the incredibly powerful image of the names painted on those barriers in 2021. The complete work comprises three movements, two of which you will hear today (II and III): I. Desapariciones, which uses the names of 997 women who disappeared in Mexico during 2017; II. Feminicidios, which includes 3,289 names of women victims of femicide; and III. Resistencia, written for all the women who are subjected to the systematic violence that comes with being a woman, and who continue to resist every day. This version of movements II and III was specifically arranged for MATA festival, adding four live voices to accompany the voices which appear on the fixed media.

Performers: Amy Garapic (vibes), Isabel Crespo, Amanda Ekery, Ana Carmela Ramirez, and Miriam Elhaji (vocals)

Jessica Pavone

Violist and composer Jessica Pavone explores the tactile and sensory experience of music as a vibration-based medium. While her primary training was in classical music at the Hartt School of Music (B.M. Music Ed. '98) and Brooklyn College (M.M. Music Composition ‘07), Pavone has dedicated her career to exploring alternative avenues for creative musical expression, "making a career of redefining the possibilities for her instrument” (Steve Smith, National Sawdust Log).

In 2017, she created the J. Pavone String Ensemble. In contrast to the traditional improvisatory approach that prizes the showmanship of the soloist, the ensemble focuses on a vision of collective improvisation that prioritizes a collaboratively sewn musical fabric. They have performed at the Suoni Per Il Popolo Festival (Montreal), Logan Center for the Arts (Chicago), Roulette and ISSUE Project Room (Brooklyn), Firehouse12 (New Haven), and Black Mountain College Museum (Asheville).

Residencies and Fellowships: Loghaven (2023), Ragdale Foundation (2022), and Ucross Foundation (2020). Grants: Queens Council on the Arts (2022, 2020), Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2021), NYFA (City Artist Corps, 2021), New Music USA (2015), the Tri-Centric Foundation (2015), Experiments in Opera (2013), and the Jerome Foundation (2011). Pavone's albums have been produced by Tzadik, Chaikin Records, Astral Spirits, and Relative Pitch Records. The New York Times wrote that her music is “distinct and beguiling… its core is steely, and its execution clear," and in Wire Magazine, Julian Cowley noted that Pavone “[is] not like other composers–she is uniquely herself, and from that stems the improbable strength of her music."

Program Notes

The string players add simple humming during Hidden Voices, contributing to the piece's timbre and the ensemble's ability to create more intricate harmonies. Hidden Voices opens with the musicians re-articulating and holding pitches as long as their natural breath, highlighting how the body plays a role in sound and intention.

Performers: Joanna Mattrey, Abby Swidler, Aimee Niemann

Lila Meretzky

Lila Meretzky is a composer, educator, and visual artist born and raised in New York City. She works primarily in chamber, vocal, electronic, and electroacoustic mediums, as well as in music for dance, film, and installation. Her work is often concerned with (the warping of) memory and language, and subjective experiences of time. Recent and ongoing collaborations include new works for Sandbox Percussion, Unheard-of//Ensemble, icarus Quartet, New Downbeat, Omer Quartet, and the Yale Philharmonia, and for the dance companies New Dialect, X-Contemporary Dance, and the Nashville Ballet. Her film work includes scoring the 2022 documentary A Climate of Anxiety. As a critic, her writings have been published on the arts blog ArtsNash and she has been featured on the radio at WXNA Nashville. As an educator, she has taught composition and musicianship at the Walden School in Dublin, New Hampshire and the W.O. Smith Music School in Nashville, Tennessee, and with Yale’s Music in Schools Initiative. She has also taught composition and music technology at Yale’s Department of Music.

Paper collage is Lila’s primary visual medium, and her work has been featured in Off Latch Press’ inaugural Off Latch Zine.

Lila is a graduate of the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University, where she co-founded the new music concert series A Humming Under My Feet. She also holds an M.M. and M.M.A. in Composition from the Yale School of Music.

Program Notes

All mute things speak today is the final piece in a cycle of nine songs on texts by the Yiddish poet Anna Margolin. The poetic speaker describes a natural world full of meaning in which stones sing "a rich chant" and "every leaf and every star" vibrate with aliveness and seem to repeat "lofty words from the great dreamers of old". And yet the person who they truly wish to speak to is silent. Likewise, the bass and soprano circle around one another, moving closer and farther apart in a conversation which thwarts any simple resolution. Video by Lila Meretzky and Nicholas Hernandez.

Performers: Catherine Brookman (soprano), Lester St. Louis (upright bass)

Sofía Scheps

Sofía Scheps (1987) is a Uruguayan composer graduated from the University School of Music (Uruguay), where she is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Theory and Composition. In 2017 she completed a Master’s Degree in Sound Art from the University of Barcelona. Her research and artistic production circulates on the frontiers of experimental music - instrumental, electroacoustic and mixed media -, video art and sound art.

Her music has participated in festivals in Uruguay (Phillarmonic Orchestra of Montevideo, NMN), Argentina (ECo: Residences), Chile (University of Chile), Paraguay (Pu Joa), Colombia (Colombian Circle of Contemporary Music), Mexico (Muslab), United States (Look and Listen), Canada (Oak Bay New Music Festival), Spain (Zeppelin, Mixtur, Insonora), Switzerland (Ars Forum Wallis), Germany (Earport, Opening Trier, Ensemble Aventure) and Sweden (Ars Nova Malmö Sound Spaces 2020). She works on diverse creative research projects, among them the improvisation group Pileta Libre, a platform for empirical instrumental research together with three professors from the Music Institute of the Faculty of Arts (Alejandro Barbot, Vladimir Guicheff and Gonzalo Pérez); the Fernández - Scheps collaboration, whose research is oriented towards the creation of multi-format pieces (or hybrid formats) and Sierra Madre, an electronic music creation project in collaboration with composer Guzmán Calzada. In addition, she has worked on sound design and original music composition for film, television series, and plays.

Program Notes

I come from afar V (MATA Festival 2023 Commission World Premiere) is the fifth of a series of pieces which explore the possibility of constructing sound contexts by interweaving simple and limited materials, which develop slowly upon fragile structures associated with the memory of the performers.

These pieces bring up questions about how extra-musical cognitive and emotional aspects (the memory or forgetfulness of a close or remote relative) can qualitatively affect these sonorities, if they do so at all.

With a semi-open score, the piece proposes different dynamics and relationships between the performers, bringing memory and listening to the foreground as fundamental tools for sound construction.

Performers: Sara Schoenbeck, Shara Lunon, Catherine Brookman, Elena Moon Park

Molly Joyce

Molly Joyce has been deemed one of the “most versatile, prolific and intriguing composers working under the vast new-music dome” by The Washington Post. Her music has additionally been described as “serene power” (New York Times), written to “superb effect” (The Wire), and “unwavering” and “enveloping” (Vulture). Her work is concerned with disability as a creative source. She has an impaired left hand from a previous car accident, and the primary vehicle in her pursuit is her electric vintage toy organ, an instrument she bought on eBay which engages her disability on a compositional and performative level.

Molly’s creative projects have been presented and commissioned by Carnegie Hall, TEDxMidAtlantic, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Bang on a Can, Danspace Project, Americans for the Arts, National Sawdust, Gaudeamus Muziekweek, National Gallery of Art, Music Academy of the West, and in Pitchfork, Red Bull Radio, and WNYC’s New Sounds. Molly is a graduate of Juilliard, Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Yale, alumnus of the YoungArts Foundation, and holds an Advanced Certificate and Master of Arts in Disability Studies from City University of New York. She is a doctoral fellow at the University of Virginia in Composition and Computer Technologies, and has served on the composition faculties of New York University, Wagner College, and Berklee Online. For more information: www.mollyjoyce.com

Program Notes

The End seeks to illuminate loss of physicality through the combination of video, music, and lyrical language. The music is inspired by German singer-songwriter Nico's cover of the classic song from The Doors, and expands to a multi-layered voice and vintage toy organ recording, reckoning with loss of physical sensation and movement and interesting with multiple camera angles focusing on two physically-different hands.

Performers: Anna RG, Yaz Lancaster, Grey McMurray