Miller Theatre at Columbia University to Continue COMPOSER PORTRAITS Series with MATANA ROBERTS

The Miller Theatre at Columbia University School of the Arts continues its 2021-2022 Composer Portraits with Matana Roberts. Roberts' challenging, engaging, socially relevant music is heard in I call america: Sandy Speaks - a multimedia world premiere Miller Theatre commission
performed by twelve improvising musicians including composer Matana Roberts.

The production features Matana Roberts, composer/performer, Matt Lavelle, bass clarinet and pocket trumpet, Stuart Bogie, tenor saxophone, Geng/King Vision Ultra, wordspeak/sampler, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, wordspeak/electronics, and Tomas Fujiwara, drumset. It also hosts an International Contemporary Ensemble including Joshua Rubin, clarinet, Ryan Muncy, saxophone, Rebekah Heller, bassoon, Katinka Kleijn, cello, Cory Smythe, piano, and Nathan Davis, percussion. Technical assistance comes from Ross Karre, video projection technician, Ben Manley, technical director, Caley Monahon-Ward, sound engineer, and Nicholas Houfek, lighting designer.

The event is to take place on Thursday, April 7, 8:00 P.M. at the Miller Theatre (2960 Broadway at 116th Street). Tickets start at $20.

Miller Theatre Executive Director Melissa Smey states, "It's always an important occasion to feature a world premiere on the Miller stage, and to present a major full-evening work is even better. Matana Roberts is an extraordinary, multi-faceted artist whose career I have followed for many years. I look forward to sharing this important new commission with audiences."

Matana Roberts is an American composer, saxophonist, and creative artist. Their work is visceral, brilliant, relevant, engaging, and challenging; it defies categorization and focuses on sonic experimentation through a multi-faceted, often socially and politically conscious lens. Experience the world premiere commission of a new iteration of I call america: Sandy Speaks, a multimedia work for twelve improvising musicians written in reflection of Sandra Bland-her life and untimely death.

I call america: Sandy Speaks (2019, rev. 2022) world premiere is a Miller Theatre commission. This work was originally commissioned by the Earle Brown Music Foundation Charitable Trust for TIME:SPANS 2019.

Matana Roberts is an internationally renowned composer, band leader, saxophonist, sound experimentalist, and mixed-media practitioner. Roberts works in many contexts and mediums, including improvisation, art, dance, poetry, and theater. They made two records as a core member of the Sticks And Stones quartet in the early 2000s and have gone on to release a diverse body of solo and ensemble work under their own name.

Roberts is perhaps best known for their acclaimed Coin Coin project, a multi-chapter work of 'panoramic sound quilting' that aims to expose the mystical roots and channel the intuitive spirit-raising traditions of American creative expression while maintaining a deep and substantive engagement with narrativity, history, community, and political expression within improvisatory musical structures. Constellation began documenting the Coin Coin project in 2011 and has released four of a projected twelve album-length chapters to date.

Coin Coin Chapter Four: Memphis unspools as a continuous work of 21st century liberation music, oscillating between meditative incantatory explorations, raucous melodic themes, and unbridled free-improv suites, quoting archly and ecstatically from various folk traditions along the way. Led by Roberts' conduction and unique graphic score practice, their consummate saxophone and clarinet playing, and punctuated by their singing and speaking various texts generated from their own historical research and diaristic writings, Coin Coin Chapter Four is a glorious and spellbinding new installment in this projected twelve-part Gesamtkunstwerk.

Photo Credits: Evan Hunter McKnight

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