The New York based saxophonist, composer and vocalist states:

"I am deeply fascinated by ephemeral decay. Decay in memory, decay in a good life lived.... It has made me a bit obsessive about the acoustic possibilities of abandoned man made spaces and in my many travels I make it a point to record myself in these spaces, dueting with the architecture. Sometimes I use these recordings to build larger one woman electronic sound quilt pieces that I experiment with in live performance and with my larger ensembles, but I always start from this root: lady + horn technically alone...but also technically not, depending on how the space speaks/screams/chants at me.... This was a lonley sunlit afternoon in an old abandoned ballroom in Houston. I imagined that many smiles, many loves, many losses, many hopes and dreams danced through this space in it's 1930's heyday....

I post most of these sound explorations on soundcloud for consideration for your own hopes, dreams, possible losses and possible loves....

soundcloud.com/matana-roberts
I sometimes photograph some of these spaces and place them for the time being here:
instagram.com/iammatana
and here where I sometimes write about the excursions
iammatana.tumblr.com "

Daniel Spicer talks to Matana Roberts in The Wire 356 about how her 12 part Coin Coin series deals with the legacy of slavery through operatic storytelling and post-civil rights jazz. To read this feature click here.