[1] It was founded in 1996 by Philip Glass, Lisa Bielawa and Eleonor Sandresky[2] and is currently under the leadership of executive director Pauline Kim Harris.
[4] Since then, the festival has been presented at various venues, such as Le Poisson Rouge,[5] Roulette,[6] and The Kitchen.
[7] Past directors and employees of MATA include Yotam Haber.
David T. Little,[8] Missy Mazzoli, James Matheson, Christopher McIntyre, Todd Tarantino, Alex Weiser,[9] Loren Loiacono, and founders Glass, Bielawa and Sandresky.
[3] MATA is consistently praised as one of the leading contemporary classical music festivals, and has been called "the city's leading showcase for vital new music by emerging composers” by the New Yorker,[23] "the contemporary classical equivalent of the U.N. General Assembly” by the Village Voice[24] and "inventive, stylistically nondogmatic" by the New York Times.