MATA Festival


The MATA Festival is a New York-based annual contemporary classical music festival devoted to championing the works of young composers. It was founded in 1996 by Philip Glass, Lisa Bielawa and Eleonor Sandresky and is currently under the leadership of acting executive director Loren Loiacono.

History

Bielawa and Sandresky were part of Glass's touring ensemble in the early 1990s; during road tours, the three conceived of concerts that would serve as an outlet for unaffiliated composers. These concerts would later form the basis of the MATA festival. MATA's concerts were originally presented at the Anthology Film Archives, leading to its name: the acronym stands for "Music at the Anthology". Since then, the festival has been presented at various venues, such as Le Poisson Rouge, Roulette, and The Kitchen.
Past directors and employees of MATA include Yotam Haber. David T. Little, Missy Mazzoli, James Matheson, Christopher McIntyre, Todd Tarantino, Alex Weiser, and founders Glass, Bielawa and Sandresky.

Commissioned composers

MATA is consistently praised as one of the leading contemporary classical music festivals, and has been called "the city's leading showcase for vital new music by emerging composers” by the New Yorker, "the contemporary classical equivalent of the U.N. General Assembly” by the Village Voice and "inventive, stylistically nondogmatic" by the New York Times.