ROBERTS, MATANA, New York, New York, will travel to Canton, Mississippi, Memphis, Tennessee,and Natchitoches and New Orleans, Louisiana, to conduct institutional research and private interviews for an ongoing, segmented, multi-media sound project based on her ancestral history in the American south. As a jazz composer an improviser, Roberts seeks to synthesize tradition and experimentation, breathing life into five generations of her African-American family's soundscapes, narratives, mythology, and lore. She has been gathering stories and doing online and word of mouth research for several years. She has enough focus now to journey to the towns and cities where her family lived, and where some still live, to find the authentic textures, rhythms, and sounds one can only discover through direct experience.