MATA And Audiofemme to Present Shara Lunon In Premiere Of Bitter Fruits At Roulette

For 25 years, Music at the Anthology (MATA) has been a home for early-career composers, sound artists, and other music creators. Through its annual festival, artist residencies, and educational initiatives, MATA has fostered the work of hundreds of experimental artists since its founding by Philip Glass, Eleonor Sandresky, and Lisa Bielawa.

On Tuesday, November 14, 2023 at 8:00PM, MATA presents Shara Lunon - poet, vocalist, composer and improviser - in the world premiere of her complete program Bitter Fruits at the Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn. The program is co-presented by Audiofemme, a curatorial collective that creates culture at the intersection of music, feminism, sex and politics. In Bitter Fruits - named for the hard-won gains reaped by marginalized people in the United States - Lunon explores survival techniques developed in response to oppression and injustice within our government, society, and communities. This electronic song cycle taps into her background as both an inheritor and innovator of Black American Musical traditions. She shared, "Sonic art is the foundation of understanding myself in the world and in my skin. I am the product of a culture deferred-a simultaneous mixture of erasure, mutation, and plurality. Being a Black Bi-racial American cultivates a complex perspective that is ever present in my approach to processing through sound. My work is the evolution of black cultural traditions - music, history, and poetry. The unpredictable nature of being Black in America parallels my focus on the music of the now with reaction, voice, and word as my foundation. I use improvisation to explore the lyrical and guttural sounds of my body, and to deconstruct text into sound components in order to convey attitudes, attributes, and connotations."For this performance, Lunon plays a light-reactive custom synthesizer in the form of a 10-foot braided wig representing generational traditions of Black and Indigenous Americans. Through reactive photocells connected to an Arduino Uno microcontroller board, the assembly invokes two distinct sonic effects reflecting two sides of the artist's life experience: a buzzy oscillator representing the suffocating voice of being unheard - or unable to fully express truth and honesty in her Black experience - and a contrasting soft-toned mode representing the strength of resilience, harmony in community, and hope.

On her choice of instrument and tonal effects, Lunon explained: "In composition, I instruct the performer to find their most authentic self through their instruments. This process is conveyed through graphic, text-based, and notated scores, allowing the musician the autonomy to interpret how they perceive this subject. With words, I orate a narrative reflecting my unique perspective as a Black American, queer woman. I enhance all of these facets with electronics into a synthesized immersive soundscape. My sonic practice is created with the mindset of congregation and community; to share and expand a culture rebirthed; a culture healing."

The program also features performances by Lesley Mok (percussion, electronics), Chris Williams (trumpet, electronics), Kalia Vandever (trombone, electronics), Lester St. Louis (electronics) and 13th Law (bass, guitar, electronics). Workshopped during the pandemic as a solo piece at The New School, the program has never before been staged publicly as a full ensemble piece.

Program Information
Tuesday, November 14, 2023 at 8:00PM
MATA Present Shara Lunon in Bitter Fruits
Roulette Intermedium | Brooklyn, NY
Tickets: $25-30
Link: https://roulette.org/event/shara-lunon-bitter-fruits/

Performers:
Shara Lunon - voice electronics, wig theremin
Lesley Mok - percussion, electronics
Chris Williams - trumpet, electronics
Kalia Vandever - trombone, electronics
Lester St. Louis - electronics
13th Law - bass, guitar, electronics

About Shara Lunon

Shara Lunon is the product of the evolution of Black American musical traditions. As a poet, vocalist, composer, and improviser, her art finds the ethereal in the chaotic. With voice as the foundation, Shara's music is an exploration of text and sound that seamlessly weaves through the ongoing relationship of struggle, resilience, and resolution. Her goal is to challenge lassitude and in its place, instill hope. Shara has performed with leading improvisers including Darius Jones, Ches Smith, Joy Guidry, and members of the International Contemporary Ensemble. Her work has been featured in The Gothamist, Metropolis Ensemble, and has won residency with Amanda + James production company, Audiofemme, and was a featured composer in the 2022 MATA Festival and Metropolis Ensemble BIOPHONY series. Currently, Shara is working with the Innova Recording Label to release a new project in 2023. Learn more at www.sharalunon.com.

About MATA

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.

The first MATA Festival took place in 1998, and showcased Jonathan Hart Makwaia, singing his own compositions, alongside performances by Lisa Moore and Ted Baker. Since then, MATA presents an internationally-recognized annual 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 emerging composers, and performed by top performers in new music.

MATA's festivals and events are critically acclaimed and broadly respected: The New Yorker has hailed MATA as "the most exciting showcase for outstanding young composers from around the world." The New York Times has called it "nondogmatic, even antidogmatic;" The Wall Street Journal said that it "tells us a lot about how composers are thinking now." Composers that have been presented by MATA early in their careers include future Rome, Alpert, Takemitsu, Siemens, and Pulitzer Prize-winners, Guggenheim Fellows, and MacArthur "Geniuses." In 2010, MATA was awarded ASCAP's prestigious Aaron Copland award in recognition of its work. Learn more at www.matafestival.org.

About Audiofemme

Born in 2012 out of a voracious love for music and exasperation with its gatekeeping, Audiofemme arose with the goal to celebrate and nurture the writings of women and non-binary journalists, and in turn evaluate music culture from an intersectional perspective. In the decade since, the organization has taken on new imperatives to reflect the urgency of the moment: the launch of the Agenda Grant in 2020 (providing seed funding for BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ artists and creators) and the establishment of the Audiofemme Abortion Access Fund in 2022. Audiofemme's objective in the next decade and beyond is to continue to shine a spotlight on the cultural contributions of women and GNC individuals through live events and initiatives.

*Photo Credit: Rose Vastola

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