MATA Festival Performer Bios BlackBox Ensemble BlackBox Ensemble is a NYC–based contemporary music ensemble redefining how contemporary music is heard, seen, and experienced. They have presented work nationwide at institutions including Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Clark Art Institute, National Sawdust, and Roulette Intermedium. Recent highlights include Speculative Listening: The Sonic World of Julius Eastman and the site-specific music-and-dance program The Sound of Space Between Us. Inspired by the theatrical and scientific “black box”, the ensemble inhabits the charged space where artistic expression and human experience meet, transforming concerts into immersive environments for interdisciplinary dialogue and new ways of listening. https://www.blackboxensemble.org/
CONCRETE HUSBAND Concrete Husband is a New York City-based producer, DJ, composer, and flutist. He's released two dance records with the Brooklyn label White Owl Records to critical acclaim, with Document hailing him as “redefining avant-garde composition.” Trained as a classical flutist at the New England Conservatory of Music, Concrete Husband draws on a comprehensive knowledge of musical history to create sonic narratives that shimmer with emotional resonance and surrealist imagination. His DJ sets weave grooves of hypnotic techno to generate moments of psychedelic mania and sensual release. Born Carlos Aguilar to a Chicano family in Southern California, Concrete Husband moved to Brooklyn in 2021, becoming a fixture on lineups at raves and clubs like Basement, Merge, Knockdown Center, Zero Chill, and Bossa Nova. Aguilar became equally well-known for his virtuosic flute performance, which led to Eartheater inviting him to open for her 2024 European tour. As a composer and performer, his scope of influence is boundless. Recent highlights include scoring Dion Lee’s 2024 Shanghai Fashion Week presentation, and the Munch Museum’s event at Milan Fashion Week, and creating flute music for Ari Aster's 2023 film, Beau is Afraid (A24).
Conrad Harris Violinist Conrad Harris has performed at Ostrava Days, Darmstadt Ferrienkürse für Neue Musik, Gulbenkian Encounters of New Music, Radio France, Warsaw Autumn, and Bang on a Can. He is member of the FLUX Quartet and violin duo String Noise, and concertmaster/soloist with the S.E.M. Orchestra and Ostravská Banda. He has performed and recorded with Elliott Sharp, Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier, David Behrman, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, Jean-Claude Risset, Rohan de Saram, and Tiny Tim. Harris has recorded several works by composer Iannis Xenakis. Recent CD releases of violin sonatas by Lejaren Hiller and John Becker are on New World Records. Upcoming recordings include works by the Sonic Arts Union and John Cage’s Freeman Etudes. He has also recorded for Lovely, Mode, Asphodel, Vandenburg, CRI, Northern Spy, Cold Blue, New