From May 31st to June 3rd, 2023, Found Sound Nation presented a four-evening festival in celebration of new musical ruminations and voices as Artists in Residence of the 2023 MATA Festival. As the 2022-2023 Artist-In-Residence, FSN selected 20 works by emerging composers and commissioned 2 world premieres. FSN also presented an evening of original collaborations from our Mosaic Interactive suite of pieces, plus an original visual-sound improvisation. 

Inspired by over a decade of gathering people for collaborative creation and exchange across geographic borders, ages and disciplines, FSN’s curation of the MATA festival featured composers from a range of geographic and stylistic backgrounds, embracing the many ways in which new musical compositions are created, shared and passed down. Each evening of composer works followed a theme, with a culminating night of works by Found Sound Nation that delved into spaces of our subconscious—memories and dreams—created in collaboration with local and global artists through a series of workshops, conversations and exchanges. 

Featured themes included “Sound, Space, Ritual”, focusing on pieces that set intentional and ritualistic space for deep listening, meditation, and improvisation; “Plug In, Turn Up”, featuring works that recontextualized and harnessed elements of live band shows to transform the energy of the contemporary classical listening space; and “Voice, Lineage, Humanness”, showcasing works about people and the nuances of our collective humanity. 

The final evening of the festival featured a night of works by Found Sound Nation that delved into spaces of our subconscious, created in collaboration with local and global artists through a series of workshops, conversations and exchanges.