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Missy Mazzoli
Executive director, MATA Festival

What’s your initial take on the Wall Street meltdown?
I think we’re going to see a lot of scaling back, and unfortunately I think the result will be a lot less risk-taking. I mean, MATA is an organization that supports young composers and contemporary music, and for the larger institutions like Lincoln Center, I think they’re going to be less likely to take risks on younger people, less likely to be more adventurous in their programming. It’s a shame because that’s usually what revitalizes an art scene is taking a risk and invest in the younger generation.

How’s your board reacting?
We do have a board of directors, but no one really knows what’s going to happen. We have a plan A, B and C, but we have a commitment to the composers we commissioned for the season and to the performers we employ, so they’ll go on no matter what happens; we’ll find a way to do it. After September 11, we entered a similar crisis and we were able to bounce back from that, so I feel that if we can do that, we can do anything. Even when the economy is good, we’ve always kept our prices low because we want to make this music available to as many people as possible. Ironically, the audience will see little change in MATA.

Have you already observed a change in mood in your field?
I think the financial crisis more than anything creates a very dark mood, so even if we’re just asking people for a little bit of money—because we’re so small, all donations go a long way—but even $100 or $150, people are not in the mood to spend money, even if they can. It creates this rippling effect. We have a benefit on October 11 and we’re hoping that people hold through for it, but we have seen a drop-off in ticket sales as a direct result of the timing.

And your benefit is pretty affordable…
Yes, but getting this invitation a week after Wall Street collapses, people are not even going to look twice at it, unfortunately. Artists are used to having a hard time with money [Laughs]. I’m confident. I’m inspired by the fact that there’s more composers moving to New York now than ever and that will never stop, and artists will never stop making art, and young composers will never stop making music—there will always be a place for our organization. The only difference is people are going to stop moving to New York to do that. A lot of my friends have already moved to Philly, to Berlin, to Vermont, to Baltimore. I feel like every week a friend of mine is leaving New York. It’s not like they’re going to stop making art, it’s just that they don’t need to do it in New York anymore. My hope is that at least rents won’t continue to go up every year at the ridiculous rate that they’ve been increasing. The upside is that in this aspect of their life, artists can be more stable. The financial crisis is also going to force New York to take a good, hard look at how the arts are funded. It’s a flawed system and it’s a very fragile system. It doesn’t leave room for small organizations like MATA to bounce back easily and to grow, even when the economy is healthy. We’re very dependent on sources of funding that are not that stable.

How do you think this crisis rates?
I became executive director about a year ago, and I moved to New York about two and a half years ago, so this is my first financial crisis [Laughs]. I’m a financial-crisis virgin! I remember Lisa Bielawa, one of the founders, and Philip Glass, telling me what it was like after September 11, that there was a huge drop in funding. But the good thing about being small is that you’re flexible. The upside is that the music community itself will be stronger because artists will stop depending on foundations and will try to do more themselves with independent labels, independent publishing companies. At this point, we have nothing to lose. But I’m optimistic in the end—people will never stop doing what they do.

NEXT: Marianne Lockwood President and executive director, Orchestra of St. Luke’s»