ISSUE opens its 2022 Fall season at First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn Heights with an in-person performance from the new improvising group of Fred Moten (voice) Brandon López (double bass), and Gerald Cleaver (drums), new work from composer/performer and media artist Pamela Z, plus SYANIDE.

Brandon Lopez performs solo selections from his album “Quoniam Facta Sum Villis,’ recently released on Austin, Texas-based label Astral Spirits. Created, in part, as an answer to the musical "reason" of Bach cello suites, Lopez seeks to create the inverse of what's hailed as musical logic -- creating something florid and beautiful from the violent and erratic and to deny the supremacy of the written in favor of the intuitive.

Malediction is a piece for four players (Michael Foster on Saxophones, Nina Dante voice, Lucie Vítková on accordion and objects, and Lopez on double bass). The piece seeks to be reliant on quiet and violent sounds and to create a space where the incidental is fostered.

Brandon Lopez continues his 2018 residency with the ISSUE debut of his piano trio, dubbed "Mess," with pianist Sam Yulsman and drummer Chris Corsano. Lopez has, in his own words, “spent some time attempting to hammer another nail in the coffin for the American thing.” With Mess, he attempts to dismember the notion of the piano trio to create a counterpart where each instrument functions outside of their supposed traditional roles. A sprawling thing devoid of harmony or melody, the trio insists giving violence and silence equivalent weight.

Brandon Lopez's second residency presentation, ALLS WELL THAT ENDS is situated in a series of works in development that use idiosyncratic improvisational techniques within forms of traditional and graphic notation, as well as aural development, to approach broader themes of catharsis and ritual religiosity.

Fairer Than Tongue is partly inspired by the grotesquely humorous painting of the beating of Saint Anthony of Padua and its correlation to the imprisonment and torture of the Pedro Albizu Campos (Leader of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Movement) by the US Government. Technically, Lopez employs compositional cells of traditional notation and text to aid in developing and shaping the piece.

ISSUE presents a duo performance between Brandon Lopez and celebrated Detroit-born jazz drummer Gerald Cleaver, a close collaborator of Lopez’s in numerous configurations (including distinct trios with Andria Nicodemou, Nate Wooley, Keir Neuringer, as well as in various large ensemble formats).