Call for Submissions
MATA Festival 2025
SCOPE OF SUBMISSION
MATA Festival 2025 seeks submissions from composers and sound artists in the early stages of their careers for our 27th Annual MATA Festival of New Music in New York City. MATA Festival 2025 will be curated by Pauline Kim Harris and a panel of eight external artists to be performed by various ensembles during the week of the Festival.
We welcome works that engage with ideas around the epistemology of TECHNOCULTURE and SPACE, addressing the impact of modern technology in those connections in our music-making through Imagination, Mysticism, Liberation, Science Fiction, History, and Fantasy — exploring your experience that connects with the diaspora of ancestry and heritage which invites you to be what you are to the fullest as a way of looking at the world.
Submissions can be pre-written pieces/scores, audio recordings of pieces, or written descriptions of pieces. Scores can be notated traditionally or non-traditionally, including graphic scores, text-based scores, and beyond. Composers can apply to perform their own work in collaboration with a selection of players drawn from the Festival ensembles.
In addition to this call for submissions, the panel will also consider pieces for MATAthons and MATA Presents. If you are interested in also being considered for a MATAthon or MATA Presents, please check the relevant box in the application. Please note the timeline – notifications for this application will be sent out by January 2025, and the performance of selected pieces will be scheduled for June 2025.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Please be sure to read through this entire page before submitting your application. The online application is in three parts:
Artist Information
Artist Statement: Please tell us about yourself and your work as an artist, including why you consider yourself to be at the early stages of your career. To learn more about what MATA considers to be an early-career composer, visit: www.matafestival.org/earlycareer-composer.
Work Samples: Present links to two pieces that you would like to be considered for the МАТА Festival 2025.
Download Submission Guidelines PDF
Deadline: October 13, 2024
MATA is a welcoming and safe place for artists to experiment. We encourage applicants who are Black, Indigenous, People of Color, LGBTQIA+, immigrants, individuals with disabilities, and people from diverse social, educational, and economic backgrounds.
ADDITIONAL INFO
Recordings
Recordings may be either audio or visual. We accept links to recordings hosted on a personal website, SoundCloud, YouTube/Vimeo, or any other streaming service. Please provide direct links to the works submitted. All links must be streamable; we cannot download individual files. Please make sure that links do not require a request to access.
Scores
We accept links to PDF documents either hosted on a personal website, Google Drive, Dropbox, Issuu, or any other document-hosting platform. Please make sure that “link sharing” is turned on, and that all links remain active indefinitely. If your work does not have a score, please provide a document with a description of how the work is performed.
Notification
Applicants will be notified of their submission results by January 2025.
There will be no financial compensation or travel stipend provided, but limited financial aid for travel is available on a case-by-case basis.
IMPORTANT INFORMATION:
Submissions must be entirely electronic – we do not accept hard copy submissions.
Application form cannot be saved – be sure to have all your materials ready before filling it out.
You cannot upload files into the application form. We are only able to accept links to your work samples.
Make sure to provide permanent links that will not expire after any period of time.
Be sure to make all links available for anyone on the internet to view. Do not only share them with MATA, we will not be able to grant access to panelists.
Submissions with links that require a request for access, require a download or are broken/expired will not be considered.
QUESTIONS?
If you have any questions about the submission process, please read our FAQ page
If you can’t find an answer there, please email info@matafestival.org