SAXOPHONIST, COMPOSER, AND MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST MATANA ROBERTS APPOINTED AS CCCC’S DISTINGUISHED GUEST COMPOSER FOR 2021-22 SEASON WITH A COMMISSIONED WORK, RECORDING PROJECT, AND RESIDENCY
The CCCC has invited Chicago-born artist Matana Roberts to serve as this year’s Distinguished Guest Composer. As part of the residency, the CCCC has commissioned an original musical composition that will be a new 45-minute chapter in Roberts’s COIN COIN series project. In addition, CCCC is supporting the recording of the commissioned work. Roberts will participate in composition activities on campus and take the CCCC’s programming outside of the concert hall with a variety of university and community activities.
Matana Roberts is one of the leading lights of contemporary experimental music, combining their widely recognized gifts as an alto saxophone player and improviser with an intensely engaged re-definition of Jazz traditions. Roberts has been called "a major talent" (The Wire) and "the spokeswoman for a new, politically conscious and refractory Jazz scene" (Jazzthetik). A self-taught mixed media composer, Roberts earned two degrees in performance from a smattering of American institutions but received their primary training from free arts programs in the American Public School System.
Composer and Director of the CCCC, Augusta Read Thomas, said, “I am thrilled and excited to welcome Roberts who will be an inspiring colleague and a valuable mentor in the Department of Music and across the university! Authentic, genuine, creative, broad-minded, and intellectual, Roberts has deep artistic and political commitments allied to a captivating, energizing spirit. We are honored to be commissioning and supporting the recording of a new chapter of COIN COIN, Robert’s monumental, multi-part, ambitious work.”
Roberts's COIN COIN project is a multi-chapter work that combines conceptual scoring (graphic notation, 'chance' strategies), storytelling and historical narrative, performative theatre (personae, costume, multi-media), and a deeply considered channeling of personal ancestry and the 'universal' experience of Africans in America. The Distinguished Guest Composer residency will allow for the recording of the new COIN COIN project commissioned by the CCCC.
“I am very much looking forward to being the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition’s Distinguished Guest Composer,” said Roberts. “It is a great honor to be in an environment where the state of creative inquiry is high, and where I feel my experimentalist ideas will be enthusiastically fostered and welcomed.”
Throughout the residency, Roberts will fully immerse themself in the CCCC’s activities — presenting at composition seminars and classes, teaching private lessons, and offering masterclasses and workshops. They will help to expand the CCCC’s impact outside of the concert halls in a variety of activities that include workshops for public school students, collaborative presentations with University partners and community organizations, and more.
ABOUT MATANA ROBERTS
Roberts has been called "a major talent" (The Wire) and "the spokeswoman for a new, politically conscious and refractory Jazz scene" (Jazzthetik). Their Coin Coin works have been widely and highly praised for its stylistic innovations and narrative power. Noted music critic Peter Margasak has written of Coin Coin: "Memory is a powerful thing, but it's so private, fluid, and unreliable that it can seem almost impossible to capture in a work of art—and history is often no more stable, once you look closely enough. Roberts has succeeded at evoking both, though, and gives their audience a long look at something ghostly, tragic, and beautiful. Roberts is carving out their own aesthetic space, startling in its originality and gripping in its historic and social power."
A self-taught mixed media composer, the Chicago-born Roberts earned two degrees in performance from a smattering of American institutions but received their primary training from free arts programs in the American Public School System.
Roberts is a past member of the Black Rock Coalition (BRC) and The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM). They have been a Van Lier Fellow, a Brecht Forum Fellow, a Copeland Fellow, a Jerome fellow, an ICASP fellow, an FCA awardee, and an Alpert Award In The Arts winner. Roberts is also a recipient of the Doris Duke Impact Award and the Doris Duke Artist Award. They have been invited to teach, lecture, run workshops and/or take up artistic residencies in countless settings under different conditions and with diverse communities over the past decade and is a past faculty member of the Banff Creative Music Workshop, Rhythmic Music Conservatory, School for Improvised Music, and Bard College.
Roberts has played with and alongside Rob Mazurek, Myra Melford, Vijay Iyer, Roscoe Mitchell, Greg Tate, Nicole Mitchell, Henry Grimes, Kyp Malone, Meshell N' degeocello, Jayne Cortez, Seb Rochford, Fred Anderson, Latasha Diggs, George Lewis, Craig Taborn, Tyshawn Sorey, David Berhman, Kyp Malone, Pat Thomas, Pauline Oliveros, Reg E. Gaines, Daniel Givens, Savion Glover, Anthony Braxton, Kid Lucky, Liberty Ellman, Amina Claudine Meyers, Jeff Parker, Handsome Furs, Robert Mitchell, Quest Love, Julius Hemphill Sextet, Merce Cunningham, Okkyung Lee, Joe Maneri, Beans, Bill T Jones, Josh Abrams, Chad Taylor, Dave Douglas and John Herndon, John King, among many others. Roberts has recorded as a guest musician with rock, pop, and electronic groups as diverse as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, TV On The Radio, Savath & Savalas, Thee Silver Mt. Zion, Deerhoof and performance artists My Barbarian. They also continue to work on a plethora of collaborative projects exploring a variety of artistic mediums.