Experimental Chamber Music Performance SHE'S BUOYANT To Have World Premiere In October

María Dolores A. Matienzo has announced the world premiere of she’s buoyant, a 75-minute post-minimalist aleatoric composition for violin, synthesizers, percussion, piano, tape, and voice, on October 26-27, 2024 at Base: Experimental Arts + Space in Seattle, Washington.

Informed by 20th-century avant-garde chamber music, the work focuses on the exploration of changes in memory of queer sensory experiences. The work leverages a graphic score, ritual practices, and video projections to guide its performers and audience in navigating between individual and shared experience.

Matienzo describes her composition as originating in changes of sensory experience brought on by medical conditions and their treatments. “It all began when I went to a sensory deprivation tank while in recovery from a concussion,” she said. “I was struck by both the profound isolation I had while floating and the loose thread I had back to the ‘outside world.’ This felt connected, but sometimes inverted, to the myriad forms of queer intimacy I’ve experienced, and the sort of emptying-of-self we need to do to experience that.” In her process of composition, she developed the concept of an “affective vacuum” – an emotional space that’s never truly empty – as a ritualistic, vulnerable state that the performers and audience are expected to approach. “My goal is to both provide an accessible container for anyone to experience this kind of internally and externally reflective vulnerability,” she continues. “Providing this accessibility through DIY productions is how new and improvised music will continue to survive.”

Matienzo, a self-described “Latina trans dyke composer, poet, and archivist,” has performed experimental music for over 20 years under her own name and as Black Tent, Secret Mirror, and maría de los dolores. Her music has been released on her own imprints like Imprecision Art, other labels like American Tapes (John Olson, Wolf Eyes), and as part of the compilation for the book Black Metal Rainbows (PM Press, 2022). she’s buoyant is her first scored work for ensemble performance. She is joined in this production by composer and violinist Jackie An (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Addict, world premiere in September 2023), and Raqa Down on synthesizers (Wild Revival, Witch Pop). The ensemble is also collaborating with dramaturg and theater artist Jesse Roth as the production’s director. 

Active listening is what I like to call this music … ambient on edge, spacious, and down to earth. Ritual music … for an urban environment. – Frans de Waard (Vital Weekly) on Black Tent’s Managed Retreat

María Dolores A. Matienzo: she’s buoyant (World Premiere)

Jackie An (violin, voice), María Dolores A. Matienzo (synthesizer, percussion, voice, piano, tape), Raqa Down (synthesizer, percussion, voice), Jesse Roth (Director)

Saturday, October 26 & Sunday, October 27, 2024 — Doors: 7:30 PM; Show 8:00 PM

Base: Experimental Arts + Space (6520 5th Avenue South, #122, Seattle, WA 98108)

Sliding scale: $5-$20; no one turned away for lack of funds

Advance tickets available at https://shesbuoyant.eventbrite.com/