MATI 2025
Music at the Intersection delivers an experience at once intimate, sprawling, and varied. Three days of blues, jazz, rap, DJs—and altogether midtown magic. In fact, a friend I was with mused “why wouldn’t we just shut down a couple blocks of Washington Ave permanently and make this a mixed use pedestrian area?” I thought it was an excellent idea and this festival works as a partial proof of concept. MATI offers the freedom to move around, to experience multiple stages within the same hour if you choose, and while there are thousands attending you can usually angle yourself into a great spot.
This year also served as the premiere of our city’s newest music and event venue, The Sovereign. This is the sort of venue that has the class and space to draw big name touring bands at the club level. The staff and AV were put to the test over these few days given the at times elbow-to-elbow crowd and the impressive variety and cadence of shows. Off the street entrance you walk into a spacious black and white tiled lobby with a handsome staircase before you, double doors to either side of it, and a lengthy, mirror-backed bar to your left. I hope it brings in the sort of acts that currently default to The Factory.
85mm | f/5.6 | 1/125 | ISO 800
50mm | f/4.5 | 1/40 | ISO 25600
Sometimes sharing exif data is embarrasing. That is a wild ISO…
85mm | f/1.2 | 1/100 | ISO 125
85mm | f/5 | 1/100 | ISO 12800
85mm | f/5 | 1/200 | ISO 320
85mm | f/2.8 | 1/60 | ISO 1250
85mm | f/2.8 | 1/60 | ISO 500
85mm | f/2.2 | 1/60 | ISO 2000
85mm | f/6.3 | 1/250 | ISO 3200
85mm | f/1.2 | 1/4000 | ISO 160
85mm | f/1.2 | 1/800 | ISO 125
50mm | f/2.2 | 1/60 | ISO 400
Film, shot on Pentax K1000, and honestly while I’m pretty sure about the settings the f/ stop and shutter speed are my best guesses. But I can be confident I would have shot this wide open, and 1/125 would have been too dark for speed, and 1/30 would have shown a little motion given this was handheld.
50mm | f/2.2 | 1/60 | ISO 400
Also a K1000 shot, and also guessing on aperture and shutter speed.
50mm | f/2.2 | 1/30 | ISO 400
Last one from the K1000, and probably the ‘worst’ image I’ve ever posted on this site—under exposed, out of focus, blurry, and nothing of interest to speak of. However, it’s also the only shot I have of The Sovereign’s lobby. And you know, I’m going to admit that while this is objectively a bad photo… I’m a bit charmed by it.
105mm | f/2.0 | 1/60 | ISO 400
Shot on the Pentax 6×7.
