Mat Muntz is a composer, bassist, and bagpiper based in New York and Croatia. Rooted in jazz improvisation and extending through microtonality, non-Western instrumentation, and experimental performance practice, Mat's work seeks to imbue the volatile and bizarre with an expressive, human immediacy. His music has been described by The Wire as “rare and rewarding” and by The Guardian as “filled with a wild, distorted energy.”

Mat graduated from Manhattan School of Music in 2016 and has performed across North America, Europe, and China at venues including Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, Roulette, Blue Note Beijing, and the Umbria Jazz Festival. His compositions have been premiered at The Shed, Moers Festival, Imani Winds Chamber Music Festival, and the 21st Century Guitar Conference. In addition, Mat has been the recipient of awards from Brooklyn Arts Council, the New York Foundation for The Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts. In 2022 Mat was invited to participate in the 2022 International Gugak Workshop in Seoul.

A practitioner of the rare Croatian bagpipe primorski meh, Mat considers the exploration of traditional instruments and forms within experimental contexts to be central to his work. This is most actively explored in his microtonal free jazz sextet Phantom Islands and The Vex Collection, a cross-cultural experimental music ensemble he co-leads with Vicente Hansen Atria featuring experimental bagpiper Matthew Welch and Korean woodwind virtuoso gamin. The integration of traditional instruments within a contemporary sound-world and the futuristic extension of their capabilities through modification, extended technique, and unorthodox combinations comprise a major focus of Mat’s present and future work.