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25 Years: MATA Festival 2023

Wednesday, May 31, 20238:00 pm

Found Sound Nation (FSN) presents a four-evening festival in celebration of new musical ruminations and voices, as Artists in Residence of the 2023 MATA Festival. Inspired by over a decade of gathering people for collaborative creation and exchange across geographic borders, ages and disciplines, this year’s MATA festival features composers from a range of geographic and stylistic backgrounds, embracing the many ways in which new musical compositions are created, shared and passed down. Each evening of composer works follows a theme, with a culminating night of works by Found Sound Nation that delve into spaces of our subconscious—memories, dreams, and rituals—created in collaboration with local and global artists through a series of workshops, conversations and exchanges.

May 31 – Evening 1: Sound, Space, Ritual
This evening features pieces that set intentional and even ritualistic space for deep listening, meditation and improvisation.
Akari Komura – Moon Greeting
Che Buford – I have been here before
Dion Nataraja – Postmortem
Isabel Crespo – la línea será
Kristofer Svensson – Av Hav
Yiheng Yvonne Wu – Sound-Body/Sound-Space
Maja Linderoth – Mouthpiece

June 1 – Evening 2: Plug In, Turn Up
In this evening’s performance we turn it up, recontextualizing and harnessing elements of live band shows of all kinds to transform the energy of the contemporary classical listening space.
Yiheng Yvonne Wu – Sound-Body/Sound-Space
Ivy Alexander – Infinite
Alexander Noice – Ambit
Jennifer Grossman – Meridian
Corie Rose Soumah: SPINNING, TOUCHED, UNDREAMT; SNOW-
Aaron Edgcomb – L’amour:La Mort
Ben Richter – P A N T H A L A S S A: Dream Music of the Once and Future Ocean
DM R – MATA Festival 2023 Commission World Premiere

June 2 – Evening 3: Voice, Lineage, Humanness
This evening features works about people and the nuances of our collective humanity. We examine lineages, histories and voice, confronting human beauty, human pain, and the connections in between.
Jessica Pavone – Hidden Voices
Jimena Maldonado – Repeat their names – Mvt. II, II. Feminicidios
Molly Joyce – The End
Yan Ee Toh – Of Celestial Dreams
Lila Meretzky – All mute things speak today
Che Buford – i said…”
Jaehoon Choi – Brushing
Sofia Scheps – New Work Commissioned by FSN for the 2023 MATA Festival

June 3 – Evening 4: MATA Artist-In-Residence Headline Concert
The final night of the MATA Festival will feature a night of works by Found Sound Nation that delve into spaces of our subconscious, created in collaboration with local and global artists through a series of workshops, conversations and exchanges.
Mosaic: Memories is an experiential and performative mythology of the hidden cosmologies expressed in the stories, song traditions, home rituals, and relationships of women. It is drawn from two years of collected interviews, song archiving, recipe exchanges, portrait studios, and film footage of Kurdish women in Turkey and women in central Appalachia, as well as the voices of the artists themselves.
Mosaic: Dreams is a collection of short pieces that take us into the dreams of a group of children who live under the shadow of a separation wall, near the Qalandia checkpoint in Ramallah, Palestine. Blending music, film, animation, and photo-journalism, these pieces explore how the unbound imaginative world of children washes up against and over the physical wall that surrounds them.


Music at the Anthology (MATA) is an incubator for adventurous emerging artists experimenting with composition, multimedia, collaborative performance art, and every imaginable sound in between. We present, support, and commission the music of early-career composers, regardless of their stylistic views or aesthetic inclinations. Founded by Philip Glass, Eleonor Sandresky, and Lisa Bielawa in 1996 as a way to address the lack of presentation opportunities for unaffiliated composers, MATA has since developed into the world’s most sought-after performance opportunity for young and emerging composers. MATA presents an internationally-recognized festival each spring in New York City of new music by early-career composers selected from a free global call for submissions; MATA Presents, commissioned projects presented at venues and non-conventional spaces throughout New York; and MATA Jr., an evening of music by pre-college composers, mentored by MATA Alumni, and performed by top performers in new music.

Found Sound Nation is the artist-in-residence and resident ensemble for the festival. Found Sound Nation is a creative agency and artist collective that uses music-making to connect people across cultural and societal divides. We believe that collaborative music creation is a deeply effective way to become aware of the beauty, trauma, and hidden potential in our communities. Our work emphasizes a mobile approach to creating and producing music, combining traditions of musique concréte, hip hop, audio journalism, and contemporary composition.

“an environment that supports its collaborators, welcomes its audience to participate, and makes it possible to take risks.” –Lana Norris, I Care If You Listen

“A premiere destination for encountering new sounds and fresh ideas, the MATA Festival has become New York’s most cosmopolitan new-music series” –Steve Smith, The New Yorker

A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing. Watch below or on YouTube.

25 Years: MATA Festival 2023

Wednesday, May 31, 20238:00 pm

Found Sound Nation (FSN) presents a four-evening festival in celebration of new musical ruminations and voices, as Artists in Residence of the 2023 MATA Festival. Inspired by over a decade of gathering people for collaborative creation and exchange across geographic borders, ages and disciplines, this year’s MATA festival features composers from a range of geographic and stylistic backgrounds, embracing the many ways in which new musical compositions are created, shared and passed down. Each evening of composer works follows a theme, with a culminating night of works by Found Sound Nation that delve into spaces of our subconscious—memories, dreams, and rituals—created in collaboration with local and global artists through a series of workshops, conversations and exchanges.

May 31 – Evening 1: Sound, Space, Ritual
This evening features pieces that set intentional and even ritualistic space for deep listening, meditation and improvisation.
Akari Komura – Moon Greeting
Che Buford – I have been here before
Dion Nataraja – Postmortem
Isabel Crespo – la línea será
Kristofer Svensson – Av Hav
Yiheng Yvonne Wu – Sound-Body/Sound-Space
Maja Linderoth – Mouthpiece

June 1 – Evening 2: Plug In, Turn Up
In this evening’s performance we turn it up, recontextualizing and harnessing elements of live band shows of all kinds to transform the energy of the contemporary classical listening space.
Yiheng Yvonne Wu – Sound-Body/Sound-Space
Ivy Alexander – Infinite
Alexander Noice – Ambit
Jennifer Grossman – Meridian
Corie Rose Soumah: SPINNING, TOUCHED, UNDREAMT; SNOW-
Aaron Edgcomb – L’amour:La Mort
Ben Richter – P A N T H A L A S S A: Dream Music of the Once and Future Ocean
DM R – MATA Festival 2023 Commission World Premiere

June 2 – Evening 3: Voice, Lineage, Humanness
This evening features works about people and the nuances of our collective humanity. We examine lineages, histories and voice, confronting human beauty, human pain, and the connections in between.
Jessica Pavone – Hidden Voices
Jimena Maldonado – Repeat their names – Mvt. II, II. Feminicidios
Molly Joyce – The End
Yan Ee Toh – Of Celestial Dreams
Lila Meretzky – All mute things speak today
Che Buford – i said…”
Jaehoon Choi – Brushing
Sofia Scheps – New Work Commissioned by FSN for the 2023 MATA Festival

June 3 – Evening 4: MATA Artist-In-Residence Headline Concert
The final night of the MATA Festival will feature a night of works by Found Sound Nation that delve into spaces of our subconscious, created in collaboration with local and global artists through a series of workshops, conversations and exchanges.
Mosaic: Memories is an experiential and performative mythology of the hidden cosmologies expressed in the stories, song traditions, home rituals, and relationships of women. It is drawn from two years of collected interviews, song archiving, recipe exchanges, portrait studios, and film footage of Kurdish women in Turkey and women in central Appalachia, as well as the voices of the artists themselves.
Mosaic: Dreams is a collection of short pieces that take us into the dreams of a group of children who live under the shadow of a separation wall, near the Qalandia checkpoint in Ramallah, Palestine. Blending music, film, animation, and photo-journalism, these pieces explore how the unbound imaginative world of children washes up against and over the physical wall that surrounds them.


Music at the Anthology (MATA) is an incubator for adventurous emerging artists experimenting with composition, multimedia, collaborative performance art, and every imaginable sound in between. We present, support, and commission the music of early-career composers, regardless of their stylistic views or aesthetic inclinations. Founded by Philip Glass, Eleonor Sandresky, and Lisa Bielawa in 1996 as a way to address the lack of presentation opportunities for unaffiliated composers, MATA has since developed into the world’s most sought-after performance opportunity for young and emerging composers. MATA presents an internationally-recognized festival each spring in New York City of new music by early-career composers selected from a free global call for submissions; MATA Presents, commissioned projects presented at venues and non-conventional spaces throughout New York; and MATA Jr., an evening of music by pre-college composers, mentored by MATA Alumni, and performed by top performers in new music.

Found Sound Nation is the artist-in-residence and resident ensemble for the festival. Found Sound Nation is a creative agency and artist collective that uses music-making to connect people across cultural and societal divides. We believe that collaborative music creation is a deeply effective way to become aware of the beauty, trauma, and hidden potential in our communities. Our work emphasizes a mobile approach to creating and producing music, combining traditions of musique concréte, hip hop, audio journalism, and contemporary composition.

“an environment that supports its collaborators, welcomes its audience to participate, and makes it possible to take risks.” –Lana Norris, I Care If You Listen

“A premiere destination for encountering new sounds and fresh ideas, the MATA Festival has become New York’s most cosmopolitan new-music series” –Steve Smith, The New Yorker

A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing. Watch below or on YouTube.

Photo by Alexia Webster