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 direction of executive director Todd Tarantino, artistic director Du Yun and director of operations Loren Loiacono.

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 of MATA include Yotam Haber. David T. Little,Missy Mazzoli, James Matheson, Christopher McIntyre, and founders Glass, Bielawa and Sandresky.

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.

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