Matana Roberts
(1975, Chicago) is an internationally renowned composer, band leader, saxophonist, sound experimentalist and mixed-media practitioner. Self-taught for the most part, they work in many contexts and mediums, including improvisation, dance, poetry, and theatre. 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. They have been invited to teach, lecture, run workshops and/or take up artistic residencies in countless places and with diverse communities over the past decade and are a past faculty member of the Banff Creative Music Workshop, School for Improvised Music, and Bard College. In 2019, Roberts was a fellow in the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin programe.