MATI, the music festival and conference formerly known as Music at the Intersection, is once again taking over the Grand Center Arts District and Midtown neighborhood from September 12-14 as it celebrates five years celebrating music in St. Louis. For three days, MATI will bring together music and thought leadership while highlighting some of the most talented musicians from St. Louis and around the world.
Presented by the Kranzberg Arts Foundation, the first iteration of MATI took place in 2021 as a two-day festival highlighting legendary artists, as well as rising and local talents, across multiple genres, including blues, jazz, soul, R&B, hip-hop, and rock ‘n’ roll.
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“It authentically celebrates St. Louis’ imprint on the American Songbook,” says Chris Hansen, executive director of the Kranzberg Arts Foundation. “It’s truly a reflection of our legacy and something all of St. Louis comes together to take advantage of. People of all walks of life come together and celebrate St. Louis by watching some of their favorite artists or hearing from one of the thought leaders at our conference.”
MATI will have its largest footprint ever this year, expanding to three days and featuring more than 100 artists across 19 venues in Grand Center and Midtown. Headliners include Grammy Award–winning rapper Common with superproducer Pete Rock, soul icon Patti LaBelle, jazz great Branford Marsalis, neo-soul singer-producer Leon Thomas, hip-hop legends De La Soul, and R&B singer-songwriter Lucky Daye. Local acts include Marquise Knox with the Funky Butt Brass Band, rave collective Materia, the Brothers Lazaroff Super Friends, Anita Jackson, and the Adam Maness Trio featuring Bob Deboo and Kaleb Kirby, among many others.
“From West Africa, through the Caribbean, up through the Delta, and up the Mississippi River, there’s a little something for everybody that loves jazz, blues, soul, R&B, and hip hop,” Hansen says. “There’s not a bad note all weekend.”
Artist-in-residence and jazz trumpet player Keyon Harrold grew up in Ferguson and has performed at MATI every year. Since its founding, he has seen the festival grow and develop significantly.
“To see it go from a couple of different venues to now taking over the whole Grand Center Arts District and see the level of artistry elevate every year is a special thing,” Harrold says. “I’ve been to a lot of festivals, but to see the ingenuity of this festival and what it aspires to be, that’s really inspiring to me.”
Harrold’s role with the festival has evolved as well, going beyond performing to now helping curate some of the wide array of artists playing the festival. And true to the event’s original name, Harrold sees MATI as an intersection of what audiences love about music and celebrating what makes St. Louis great.
“St. Louis is a diamond mine, if you ask me,” Harrold says. “There’s so much talent, love, integrity, individuality, and artistry there that we get a chance to see what St. Louis has to offer.”
In addition to the four MATI Main Stages, The Big Top, The Sovereign, The Field Stage, and Sophie’s Artist Lounge, there are also 15 MATI Places, which include Central Stage, High Low, Jazz St. Louis, Urban Chestnut Brewing Company, The Dark Room, The Key, Work & Leisure x Kre8 Space, and .ZACK, alongside non-ticketed, publicly accessible spaces including the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Counterpublic, Golden Gems and Hidden Gem, Metro Theater Company Pulitzer Arts Foundation, Sally’s Rooftop Garden, and Strauss Park.
The MATI Places will play host to a wide variety of programming, such as musical performances, DJ sets, poetry slams, and artist workshops, as well as keynote speakers and panels happening as part of the concurrent MATI Conference. While all of this programming is available to weekend passholders and single-day ticketholders, there’s also a new, lower-priced option that opens up all of the programming at the MATI Places for just $20 a day as part of an effort to make the festival more accessible.
“We have community curations all across the footprint of the festival this year,” Hansen says. “We’ve kinda given the keys to different curators from Frizz Fest, AP Art Entertainment, the Brothers Lazaroff and their Laz Jazz Fest, S.L.U.M. Fest, and many more. We’ve given them a lot of license to bring a group of artists together in a way that they would want to.”
A prime example of this is the Laz Jazz Artist Lounge at Urban Chestnut. Blvck Spvde, frontman and producer of Blvck Spvde & the Cosmos, is not only performing at MATI, but is also helping curate the Laz Jazz Artists Lounge. Pulling from his experience programming at his own venue, Blank Space, as well as helping curate part of the 2024 Laz Jazz Festival, Blvck Spvde and his collaborators see this expanded version of the festival as a way of better serving the many niches that fall under the broader MATI umbrella.
“We believe that these types of festivals are needed in places like St. Louis,” Blvck Spvde says. “It’s like a gumbo of different things, but who’s to say that different kinds of artists can’t exist together in this kind of avant-garde festival?”
Being able to curate the kind of festival he and his collaborators would want to attend, with up-and-coming artists others may not know about, speaks to what makes MATI such an important and exciting festival in St. Louis, both for performers and attendees.
“It’s so beautiful to see so much of the young local talent side-by-side with national acts and being able to observe and learn,” Blvck Spvde says. “I hope it stays forever.”
From the start, MATI has been about instilling this kind of local pride alongside drawing interest with national acts. The festival is also supporting the ongoing relief efforts following the May 16 tornado, donating $10 from each pass sold to 4 the Ville to assist their boots-on-the-ground efforts. Hansen says this kind of pride and engagement brings people together, helping to make the Grand Center Arts District and Midtown a destination.
“To have something of this caliber, right in the middle, our own small South by Southwest, Jazzfest, or Essence Fest, it’s something that attracts diverse audiences,” Hansen says. “Old people and young people come together in a field, or under the Big Top, and listen to music together that they’ve never heard before alongside legends of the stage. It builds relationships, it helps build civic pride, and helps reunite people with the urban core, bringing people together into the streets to celebrate what makes us unique.”
For more information about MATI, and to purchase passes, visit matistl.org.
