As Executive Director Todd Tarantino impressively boasted during his remarks at MATA‘s opening gala on Monday, April 13, 2015 from within the intimate, barn-like sanctuary of the Paula Cooper Gallery, this festival is the only concert series of its kind to exclusively commission and program the work of young and emerging composers, so defined as being under the age of 40. As a result, according to Tarantino, MATA is therefore the most sought-after opportunity for composers within this demographic in the world, drawing attention this year from over 70 countries and exceeding 1000 submissions. MATA alumni have gone on to receive honors not limited to MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships, Takemitsu, Pulitzer, Alpert and Rome Prizes, and Barlow and Koussevitsky commissions. If the ensuing week of extremely diverse and thoughtful programming organized by MATA’s newly appointed Artistic Director, Du Yun, is to be any indication, these statistics are at best an understatement of the raw talent and potential being showcased here.
Here are a few highlights from the latter half of the festival, which was presented this year from The Kitchen in Chelsea:
Featuring the New York-based Momenta Quartet (joined by various guest instrumentalists) and entitled “Unreasonable Visions,” Thursday, April 16th’s presentation opened with an approachable work by MATA’s own Director of Operations, Alex Weiser. Weiser’s straightforward exploration of dissonance and consonance made for a compelling departure point. In contrast, Guy Barash‘s Wrong Ocean, a kinetic, ten-movement flurry of wild precision, offered another extreme while exhibiting an analogous standard of discipline and maturity. Greek composer Michalis Paraskakis channeled shades of Morton Feldman’s works for clarinet and string quartet with his pulsating Not Yet II, featuring clarinetist Christa Van Alstine. Bringing the first half of the concert to a close was Eric Nathan‘s rather poetic Four to One, described by the composer as an homage to the auroral sunsets of Upstate New York.
Momenta Quartet
Following intermission, the stage was ominously set with a large, glass bowl of water, perched on top of a black cylinder and lit from beneath. Percussionist Ian Rosenbaum joined the Momenta Quartet at this station, striking a triangle and then confronting the water bowl, delicately tapping, splashing and sprinkling in a concentrated trance. The work, entitled Mirage, by Iranian composer Idin Samimi Mofakham (who was able to watch the performance via Skype), developed patiently and stoically in long, subtle tones, pointed by sudden crashes on a small gong suspended in and out of the water. Something about the use of the water gong did feel somewhat hackneyed, though in his commentary after the performance, Mofakham rather touchingly explained that the water was representative of reflecting pools found in traditional Iranian courtyard houses, which are thought to bring heaven into the home. The final work in the program was Daniel Moreira‘s Das Nein-Doch Spiel, which brought the evening to a rather varied close. Moreira’s work employed a wide array of found objects-turned-instruments to establish a self-contained vocabulary of sounds. The piece made apparent its moderate humor, particularly in the false ending, during which conductor Carl Christian Bettendorf relaxed his arms and seemed to signal the end of the piece, only to start up abruptly as soon as the applause began. Despite the work’s enjoyable charm, it did seem to rely a bit too heavily upon its novelty to stand out as truly unique.
Opening with a self-contained work by Irish composer Jonathan Nangle, which involved a sizzling, pre-programmed electronic score that cued an exciting light show (via a set piece Nangle carried all the way from Ireland for this purpose), the majority of Friday, April 17 belonged to Brooklyn-based trio Bearthoven, which consists of pianist Karl Larson, percussionist Matt Evans, and bassist Pat Swoboda. Featuring works largely composed for Bearthoven by Fjóla Evans, Amanda Schoofs, David Alan Broome, Adam de la Cour and MATA Artistic Director Du Yun, the evening’s standout works for the ensemble were those of Schoofs and Broome. Schoofs’s work, entitled Intimate Addictions, was essentially an extended improvisation, featuring the composer vocalizing wild, breathy grunts and primal noises and communicating with the ensemble through occasional intimate glances and bodily cues. According to the composer, the material of the work is intended to be gleaned from a series of abstract paintings and poetic fragments, provided to the performers on a series of 7.5″ x 5″ cards. As in any work of this variety, any discernible correlation between these images and the resulting performance seems largely arbitrary. Nonetheless, the opportunity to witness such a creative process in real time, coupled with Schoofs’s courageous performance, elevated the evening to an entirely different level of sophistication.
In contrast to the near ritualistic, primal quality of Schoofs’s work, the material of David Alan Broome’s Ominousty was drawn from Billy Joel’s popular hit Honesty. A phrase from the song was programmed into an electronic piano keyboard, cued to play back at various speeds as the keys were depressed by Bearthoven’s pianist, Karl Larson. Starting out as a haze of chipmunk-like shrieks, the underlying song gradually came into focus as the piece progressed, eliciting a raucous, jovial reaction from the audience and succeeding in Broome’s mission to “make the familiar unfamiliar.”
Much of the second half was eclipsed by a moderate shadow, cast by the questionable taste and judgement exhibited by Artistic Director Du Yun in programming her own work, a move that deviates from the presumable responsibilities of the position, though Yun does meet the criteria, being a composer under the age of 40. Appearing on an elevated platform, and channeling the aesthetic of Cruella De Vil from beneath a punky, black and white wig, Yun participated in the performance, shouting and wailing over improvised material performed by Bearthoven. The overblown theatricality of the piece and its confusing elements (such as a slow-motion film of people mourning over a corpse at a funeral, the inclusion of which was never adequately explained) seemed to compete directly with the others, right down to Yun’s melodramatic and nonsensical vocalizations, which mirrored those of Schoofs to a cartoonish degree, channeling shades of Bjork.
Bearthoven
With so much emphasis being placed upon the exclusive, competitive nature of being chosen by MATA, and the career building potential that follows, the question that comes most prominently to mind is what virtuous work was precluded from this coveted opportunity to make room for this forum?
The final work of the evening (commissioned by MATA) was another exercise in multimedia, Adam de la Cour‘s Corporate Talent Factor’s Next Top Idol!, which consisted of a short film showcasing the composer in various vaudevillian antics and a live score performed by Bearthoven in sync with the film. While the film was entertaining, its farcical critique of global corporate culture and greed was rather unoriginal and came across as little more than preachy.
“Incomparable Contrivances,” the final concert in this year’s festival, brought New York’s Talea Ensemble, conducted by James Baker, to The Kitchen on Saturday, April 18. Dan Van Hassel‘s Ghost in the Machine took the use of electronics in a refreshing direction, with small mechanical devices triggering sounds from unmanned percussion instruments placed about the stage building a luscious texture of acoustic sounds, controlled by electronic means. Matthias Kranebitter‘s packthebox(withfivedozenofmyliquorjugs) involved a pre-recorded electronic track, which cued rabid bursts of material from piano, flute and trombone, the latter being played into the body of the piano. Further down the electronic rabbit hole, Davor Branimir Vincze’s Inflection Point evolved slowly and subtly before its electronic element emerged as a dreamlike echo, reproducing the acoustic material like a hazy memory.
Ann Cleare‘s eöl, another MATA commission, featured homemade, wearable percussion instruments, rather sinister in appearance and which easily could have been plucked from the props table of Mad Max. Percussionist Alex Lipowski played into the moderate theatricality suggested by this gear with dramatic effect, though it was unclear whether or not the sounds produced justified their construction and use. That said, the visual element, while abstract, was certainly an intentional component of the piece.
Following this work, Ofir Klemperer joined the Talea Ensemble to sing his A Love Song, in which his brutal, hardcore and punk-styled vocals (sung largely through a bullhorn) were supported by intricately notated rhythms, played on indefinite pitches. Klemperer’s direction to the ensemble to play “as loud and violent [sic] as possible, constant crescendo” were carried out to the letter.
As if to summarize the varied and highly successful works of this and the previous nights of the MATA Festival, Sam Pluta‘s Machine Language was a kinetic and inspiring triumph of precision in improvisation. Percussionists Alex Lipowski, Ian Antonio, and Russell Greenberg walloped their way through exciting patterns and timbres on woodblocks, drums, gongs and cymbals, suspended over a nebulous haze of droning textures produced by microtonal violins, electronics and accordion bellows. Exciting and bombastic, Pluta’s work is the stuff for which standing ovations are made.
Indeed, to summarize the breadth of talent put on display throughout MATA’s 2015 Festival, one can only say that the future of creative music is inspired and exciting. Artistic Director Du Yun’s good taste and ear for potential in selecting this year’s participants largely prevailed over the misstep of including her own work in the program, and has set the bar high for future seasons. Just as important, it will be very exciting to see how the careers of those featured in this year’s programming continue to develop and, perhaps, evolve as a result of having been included.