Annual MATA Festival
In partnership with ISSUE Project Room

INTERGALACTIC INFINITY:
Music Between Spaces

June 11-14, 2025

ISSUE Project Room | 22 Boerum Place | Brooklyn, NY

Festival Passes Available April 22, 2025
Single Tickets Available May 1, 2025

Welcome to MATA Festival 2025, where bold soundscapes and visionary artistry collide. This year, we invite you to journey through INTERGALACTIC INFINITY – Music Between Spaces, a four-day celebration of cutting-edge music and genre-defying performances.

The festival will feature an exceptional lineup of emerging composers and acclaimed artists who are redefining the landscape of contemporary music. Expect groundbreaking premieres, immersive performances, and bold artistic statements that stretch far beyond the expected.

Out of nearly 400 submissions from across the globe, we’ve curated a dynamic program that represents the future of music — daring, diverse, and deeply imaginative. The selection process was highly competitive, and we’re proud to spotlight voices that push boundaries and spark new ways of listening.

Works by Roscoe Mitchell, Oliver Lake, George Lewis, Wadada Leo Smith, and MATA Festival 2025 Early-Career Composers, with a World Premiere by Reza Vali.

Curated by Pauline Kim Harris (Executive Director of Music at the Anthology) 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.

*MATA Festival 2025 Early-career Composer
 

27th Annual MATA Festival Schedule

ENTER THE IMPOSSIBLE

Opening Night: Wednesday, June 11, 2025 at 7pm (doors 6:30)

Performances by Sun Ra Arkestra; FLUX Quartet; Jessie Cox, drums; and Sam Yulsman, piano and electronics

Program:
Jessie Cox: Enter the Impossible (2023) for Sun Ra Arkestra; commissioned by the Paul Fromm Foundation
Oliver Lake: One Move (2022, New York Premiere)
Jessie Cox: Sound Drape Painting (2025, World Premiere)
+*Diallo Banks: Sarmad for String Quartet (2025, World Premiere)

The 27th annual MATA Festival opens with Jessie Cox’s evening-length opus Enter the Impossible, written for and performed by the unparalleled Sun Ra Arkestra, with FLUX Quartet and Sam Yulsman. Enter the Impossible is imagined as a space flight, journeying through different musical spaces, including many pieces from Sun Ra Arkestra’s large collection of works, such as Say from their recent record Swirling, or the classic Space is the Place, among others. The concert also includes the world premiere of Cox’s Sound Drape Painting, inspired by Sam Gilliam’s drape paintings and exploring new ways of hearing musical form and movement through the sonic. Cox explains, “Music as aesthetic experience proposes, or is a site to imagine, ways of spacing – how we come to inhabit and make space and time." FLUX Quartet will also perform the New York premiere of jazz saxophonist, flutist, composer, poet, and visual artist Oliver Lake’s One Move as well as the world premiere of MATA Festival 2025 Early-Career Composer Diallo Banks’ Sarmad for string quartet. Sarmad is structured around the concept of yati, a principle in South Indian music that shapes musical phrases through systematic variation.

THE CAPITOL

Night Two: Thursday, June 12, 2025 at 7pm (doors 6:30)

Performances by FLUX Quartet, MATA Mavens, TROPOS, and RE:duo

Program:
Wadada Leo Smith: String Quartet No. 17 (The Capitol, Washington D.C.: An Experiment With Democracy and Capitalism) for String Quartet (2024, New York Premiere)
Roscoe Mitchell: 9/9/99 With CARDS for String Quartet (2009/2011, rev. 2021, New York Premiere)
*Ledah Finck: The Best Donuts In Pennsylvania for Violin, Saxophone, Piano and Drums (2023)
*Inga Chinilina: Shock Workers for Viola, Saxophone and Motors (2024, New York Premiere)
*Kylan Hillman: Methods of Crunching for Electric Guitar (2024)
*Anna Meadors: Encircle, recirculate for Saxophone and No-Input Mixer (2025, World Premiere)
*Jee Seo: On Fever II for Solo Violin (2017, New York Premiere)
*Brian Mark: Per Aspera Ad Astra for Solo Violin and Digital Delay Processing Pedal with Video (2020)

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.

SALMAK (World Premiere)

Night Three: Friday, June 13, 2025 at 7pm (doors 6:30)

Performances by FLUX Quartet and MATA Mavens

Program:
Reza Vali: String Quartet No. 6, Salmak (2024, World Premiere)
*Petra Strahovnik: Attack for String Quartet (2023, New York Premiere)
*Anuj Bhutani: On Letting Go for Solo Cello and Electronics (2020)
*Rodrigo Espino: Responso el en Vacío for Contrabass Clarinet and Electronics (2023, World Premiere)
*Negar Soleymanifar: Prelude to the Ashes for Cello and Narrator (2023, New York Premiere)

Night Three of the 27th Annual MATA Festival is centered around the world premiere of Reza Vali’s String Quartet No. 6, Salmak, a tribute to the great 13th century Persian music theorist and musician Safialdin Ormavi. Vali says of the work, “I have used some of Ormavi’s 13th century medieval modes and have interpolated these modes with some of the modes of the modern Persian modal system, the Dastgâh system.” The evening also includes four pieces by 2025 MATA Festival Early-Career Composers, each exploring varying heightened emotional states – surviving survival instincts; pain and lamentation; catharsis after the pandemic; and the struggle to release unresolved emotions – performed by FLUX Quartet and the MATA Mavens.

EXPERIMENTS IN LIVING

Night Four: Saturday, June 14, 2025 at 7pm (doors 6:30)

Performances by Members of FLUX Quartet; Ensemble LPR led by Tito Muñoz, conductor; Majel Connery, soprano; Han Chen, piano; Erika Dohi, piano; Paul Kerekes, piano; and Oshay LeGare, baritone

Program:
George Lewis: String Quartet 1.5, “Experiments in Living” (2016)
*Giordano Bruno do Nascimento: Vis-aVis(a) for 3 Performers and One Grand Piano, 3 Toms and Credit Cards (2020, New York Premiere)
*Paul Novak: seven dreams about my body for microtonal sextet (2024, New York Premiere)
*Andrew Stock: “Les concerts ne sont jamais de veritable musique, on doit renoncer a y entendre, ce qu’il y a de beau dans l’art.” for Piano, Flute, Clarinet (or bass clarinet), Violin (or viola), Cello, and Percussion (2024, New York Premiere)
*Luis Quintana: Textos Invisibles for Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Viola, Cello, Piano, Soprano/Mezzo (2015, New York Premiere)
*Sofia Jen Ouyang: Return to Root for Conductor, Flutes, Soprano, Percussion, Recorded-improvisation, and Video (2022)
*Nina Fukuoka: Polka is a Czech Dance for Flutes, Clarinets, Cello, Percussion, Piano, with Video (2023, US Premiere)
*Kevin Ramsay: Golden Euphonics for Alto Flute, CB Clarinet, Piccolo A Trumpet, Violin, Cello, Piano, and Baritone (2023)

The centerpiece for Night Four of the 27th Annual MATA Festival is George Lewis’s String Quartet 1.5 "Experiments in Living” from 2016; Lewis's first string quartet. He says of the work, “I take ‘Experiments in Living,’ a phrase from John Stuart Mill, to express my notion of recombinant assemblage, associative sonic discourses that appear and recur in ever new forms and guises, suffused with the power of noise. . . I’m looking for listeners to experience the volatility of memory, resistance, and hope." Night Four includes seven works by 2025 MATA Festival Early-Career composers, all exploring what lies beyond our perception – from a sextet encapsulating vivid dreams during the pandemic to a work exploring the reciprocity of presence and absence – performed by FLUX Quartet, Ensemble LPR led by conductor Tito Muñoz, soprano Majel Connery, pianists Erika Dohi and Paul Kerekes, and baritone Oshay LeGare.

*MATA Festival 2025 Early-Career Composer
+Next Fest Composer, selected from MATA Festival alumni and participants

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Annual MATA Festival In partnership with ISSUE Project Room

INTERGALACTIC INFINITY: Music Between Spaces