Duo with No Land
Poet/Film Maker/Artist No Land's visceral and circuitous text is paired with the ethereal and atmospheric sounds of altered viola, to bring textures into the darker primordial realms in a dialogue between text and sound. Storytelling, myths, characters, staging and props are all vehicles which support this duos cross-media performance. Fixed and spontaneous materials weave together through a deep love of connection and improvisation. No Land's poetry conceives of revolution as a continuous search for truth-- evoking mutability, lineages of bygone poets, impermanence & political surreality. The pairing of viola & poem creates a space both entrancing & shapeshifting, at times ethereal, angelic, full of escape, and at other times guttural & exasperated.
The Film 'Crepuscular' by No Land and Anne Waldman, which features Mattrey as a film score composer and guest actor premiered at the Poetry Project in 2018, has been presented at Jack Kerouac's School of Disembodied Poetics, Boulder, CO 2019, at Entanglements Conference at Wake Forrest, NC 2019, and Howl Gallery, Jan 2020.
This duo has performed at CoTA Jazz Fest, La MaMa Galleria, Real Art Ways, Brackish, Spectrum, Hart Bar, Rhizome, DC, Record Shop, The Red Room, and at the New Experience concert series.
Review: No Land and Joanna Mattrey, Performances at LaMaMa and Spectrum
April 25, 2019 Cisco Bradley Concert Reviews No comments
Poet No Land has surged onto the scene over the past couple of years, performing in duos, trios, or solo, mesmerizing audiences with her precise diction and incisive commentary. Joanna Mattrey has been performing in New York the better part of a decade in a number of contexts, including solo sets, and has worked in duo with No Land in recent months in a particularly electrifying ensemble that, at times, has included other great improvisers such as multi-instrumentalist Daniel Carter. No Land is a force to be reckoned with and Mattrey meets her aesthetic head on with an entire universe of her own tones. Recognition for both of these incredible performers is long overdue. -Cisco Bradley
https://www.jazzrightnow.com/review-no-land-and-joanna-mattrey-performances-at-la-mama-and-spectrum/
TETHER: Dance Trio
TETHER is the trio of Joanna Mattrey, Chris Williams (trumpet/composition) and Laurel Snyder (dancer/choreographer/voice) who met at Banff Collective Composition Lab for Music and Dance in 2019. We have since been developing pieces that investigate proximity in sound and movement and utilize spatialized sound sources and acoustic reverb.
How do our bodies and sounds relate to each other as we range from near to far, from virtual to live? We are interested in creating a site-centered piece where we can utilize the resonant features of the space to enable the vibrations from the groups moving and sounding bodies to interact and create a dialogue that explores a range in proximity during this time of isolation.
Connections
Live at MoMa PS1's ALLGOLD,
September 6th, 2015
Video: Brooke Herr
Electronics: Jonah Rosenberg
Sound Installation:
Joanna Mattrey, viola
Leila Bordreuil, cello
Sean Ali, Bass
'Connections' is a multi-media installation that attempts to turn the performance space into a living realization of Stockhausen's score 'Verbindung' (trs. connections). We used the subdivided layout of the space to present different lenses through which to search for Connections within Stockhausen's text-based guidelines.
Electronic drones were layered with interviews and spatialized through out the rooms. Video projections interacted with tape players that were spread throughout the installation, and zines displayed visual realizations and explorations of the connective experience, all while three amplified performers played a durational-style three hour improvisation.
String Trio
with Leila Bordreuil, cello and Sean Ali, bass
Freely improvised String Trio that explores unconventional sound worlds, natural resonant frequencies of the instruments, and calls upon extended techniques through the use of preparations and unorthodox playing styles.
The trio has performed at the Rubin Museum, Issue Project Room, MoMa PS1, H0L0, 49 Shade, Brackish, Home Audio, Rye Bar, JACK, 65 Fen, Real Art Ways, Trans-Pecos, Arts for Art, Boston's Advent Library, and recorded a radio segment on WKCR.
Debut album, 'i used to sing so lyrical'
on Astral Spirits Records