I am a violinist, improviser and educator. Since 2007 I have been focusing on the performance of contemporary music, commissioning and premiering new works for violin and string quartet. In 2008 I founded the Mivos String Quartet, now in its 12th season and we continue to perform, tour and teach at residencies in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

I was born in Vienna and grew up between Vienna and Italy. In 2001 I moved to the U.S. (always a dream of mine) to pursue my Bachelor’s degree at the Eastman School of Music. In 2009 I received my Master’s degree from the Manhattan School of Music and started freelancing in New York City.

Starting a family was never a big priority for me and the insecurity and instability of being a freelance musician in NYC (both for me and my partner) made me want to wait and think about it longer. Despite some hesitation, in 2016 we decided to take the plunge and start a family. Our son Leandro was born that November and yes, it was a huge change! I was back on tour just 2 months after he was born - a real challenge!

It was difficult to juggle everything all at once, yet with the support of family and friends I was able to still perform, tour and be a mom. Through my son I learned how to organize my time well, set priorities and focus intensely. His curiosity, experimentation and appreciation of new things were inspiring to my own work and creativity.

Being an artist mother is a subject still not talked about very openly. This lack of public discourse motivated me to connect with other musician moms, share our experiences and work on projects together inspired by ‘motherhood’. This project is called “I. A.M, Artist Mother” and will be released in September 2021 featuring 7 new collaborative works.

www.oliviadeprato.com

I am a composer, pianist, teacher, and interdisciplinary artist. I write for everything from orchestra, to chamber music and solo pieces, working in both acoustic and electronic mediums. I also enjoy making collaborative projects with sound installations, dance, film, visual art, and theatre.

At 17, I left for Montreal to study piano performance and composition at McGill University, and by way of a stint in Paris, I ended up in New York pursuing a DMA in composition at Columbia University, where I now teach as an assistant professor.

In a strange set of circumstances, I wrote and defended my thesis, interviewed and started my job, and became pregnant with my first baby all within a period of a few months. It was a time of intensity and change, but I’m grateful that I landed a relatively secure situation as we were starting a family. Having grown up in a small town, my current life raising two kids (now 6 and 1) in NYC with my partner is quite different from my experience of childhood.

Before having a baby, I was worried about losing my identity as an artist, so I took on ambitious projects and travel in the first year of my child’s life (I wouldn’t necessarily do this again).

Having a supportive partner, family help, and childcare have been key for me to be able to continue what I do. Though juggling these many responsibilities is often difficult, my family is a great source of inspiration, comfort, and motivation. Having kids has also put my art into perspective and focused my attention.

After Alice and Olivia approached me separately about writing pieces on the theme of music and motherhood, I began to dig into this topic and why it is still dealt with so discreetly. During the pandemic, I started a podcast/duo project “The Dream Feed: Musicians on Motherhood”, to open dialogues about the seemingly incompatible worlds of professional music and motherhood. I am thrilled to join forces with Matricalis to foster more conversations and support around this topic.

www.zoshadicastri.com

I am a flutist, composer, and producer. I pride myself on the versatility of my work and have collaborated with many artists including The International Contemporary Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, Third Coast Percussion, Lizzo, and Hans Zimmer. My compositions include solo, chamber, film, and large ensemble works, and I’ve been commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Library of Congress, Carolina Performing Arts, and others. Starting with my group Flutronix, I’ve always set out to redefine what it means to be a “classical” musician and what that looks like.

Born in Chicago, I grew up in a home filled with an eclectic mix of music. I started the flute at 10 and went on to earn a degree in flute performance. After my undergrad, I found myself trying to understand what I wanted out of a career in music. I was living in Brooklyn, playing all kinds of gigs, improvising, and started composing. I met like-minded flutist/composer Nathalie Joachim and we started Flutronix. Simultaneously, I was falling in love with my now-husband. I began graduate work in composition at NYU and during my second year, I was very surprised to learn I was pregnant with my son. Interestingly, I never panicked. I always felt my son was a gift and that, thankfully, I was surrounded with plenty of love and support to pull it off. Perhaps it was young naïveté, but I was thrown when people would say things like: “What about your career? What about grad school? Are you still going to be a Musician? Is Flutronix really going to happen? You’re only 27, are you sure?…”

But this child was a blessing and I knew we’d figure it out. I took a semester off, but finished school and remained invested in all my commitments. It continues to be hard work, but I’m 100% convinced that everything was meant to be. My son is now almost 12, I have a 6 year-old daughter, and my family continues to inspire me and keep me going.

Diametrically Composed explores this duality of being a mother/artist. When I began in 2017, I realized I wasn’t the only woman in my field interrogated about their pregnancy. I also learned so many of us guarded our family life from the public, out of fear of being judged or our work not taken seriously. Here, I debunk the notion that a woman cannot succeed at both, and honor how these dimensions of a person can inform and feed one another.

I am thrilled to be a part of Matricalis and to build an exultant community for musician moms. Being able to create life and music is beautiful, magical, and POWERFUL. If anything, we need to be nurtured and celebrated, and that’s why Matricalis is here.

www.allisonloggins.com

I am a vocalist, flutist, burgeoning sound artist and educator. I have focused much of my creative interest and attention on new compositions and rarely-heard works from the Baroque, and love to find beauty and lyricism in all my expressive avenues. I am a core member of the New York-based International Contemporary Ensemble and a founding member of Echoi, La Perla Bizzarra and The Atelier, smaller chamber ensembles with distinctive voices and working methods. I teach at New York University’s Music Department.

Although my parents are French, I was born in Melbourne, Australia. We then moved as a family to the Twin Cities in Minnesota, where my brother Johnny and I benefited from a wonderful artistic and musical education. Dualities and multiplicities were always part of my life: French at home and English in the community; piano, flute and singing as modes of expression. Perhaps these multiplicities allowed me to consider the various aspects of my developing identity, and welcome the chance to become, alongside my husband Bradley, a parent.

I have never felt more creatively linked and inspired than during this process of becoming a mother. Despite feeling quite attuned, as a musician and particularly a singer, to my body and its capabilities and limitations, my pregnancy taught me so much about its flexibility, elasticity, bandwidth and sheer power. Music also took on a different context, one of supreme intimacy and private importance. My priorities as a human being—balancing my life as a professional musician but also as someone’s mother—shifted seismically and irrevocably. And my desire to share my experience, both in conversation with women who had already become mothers and those who did not know this experience, grew to encompass my musical voice and my public platform; this work now exists under a project called Thresholds.

I am so excited about the creation of this wider community; we deserve to share our experiences, support one another, advocate for policy change on local and systemic levels, and to genuinely live our full selves. Looking forward to meeting many more of you in the process!

www.aliceteyssier.com