FILMMAKER
Kate Matson, filmmaker, creates a theatre of visual improvisation originating on Super 8 film by choreographing found objects which have included cotton balls, condoms, silk, spoons, tiny doll figures, and her father's oboe reeds.
She has transformed her background in theatre, drama, and design into a world of film animation. Her work has had improvised accompaniment ranging from solo piano in a coffee house setting to the entire Aardvark Jazz Orchestra at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
With her group, FiLmprov, she has participated since 2006 in annual film/music performances at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sponsored by the Music & Theater Arts section, featuring, along with the eminent performers of the FiLmprov ensemble, such guest artists as vocalist Lisa Thorson, pianist Tim Ray, and violinist Mimi Rabson. FiLmprov's 2013 MIT appearance opened the Art of the Improvisers Concert Series. 2013-2020 Matson was a guest artist for the course Musical Improvisation giving students the opportunity to FiLmprovise!
In 2007 Matson was selected to present FiLmprov with her program A Moment in Chaos for the citywide First Annual Cambridge Science Festival.
Her films have been screened in Matt Samolis's Advent Library Series with cellist Rob Bethel joining the ensemble; Arts at the Armory Cafe, Somerville, Mass; at Berklee College of Music given musical life by Lisa Thorson, Tim Ray, John Funkhouser, bass, and Mark Harvey, trumpet; the Berkshire Community College Forum, Pittsfield, MA with poet Richard Chrisman; Sangha, Takoma Park, MD with the Aardett; at the Society for Arts, Religion, and Contemporary Culture, New York City with Ken Filiano, bass, Mark Harvey, piano, and Len Detlor, flute; at Harvard University’s Dudley House (with the first addition of poetry), Cambridge, MA; and at Suffolk University Law School to benefit AIDS Walk/Boston 2003.
A trio of her films, Constellation Suite, with score by composer Forrest Larson, was screened at MIT in 2002 and at the Experimental Intermedia Festival: Screen Compositions 6 in New York City March 22, 2010. Part One, Gyrus/Sulcus, of their most recent creative collaboration premiered at MIT January 2013.
She has created films for the multi-media Pieces of Cane workshops for Bill Lowe’s Kabnis: The Gothic Detective Musical drawn from the text of Harlem Renaissance author Jean Toomer’s Cane presented at Hibernian Hall, Roxbury, MA and the Amistad Center at the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT.
