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The Distant Pairs events are FREE to stream. In lieu of purchasing Series tickets, please consider making a donation of any amount that you feel is meaningful in support of ISSUE's 2022 commissions. Enabling the fullscreen function is recommended. The length of the full presentation is approximately 20 minutes.
The Distant Pairs events are FREE to stream. In lieu of purchasing Series tickets, please consider making a donation of any amount that you feel is meaningful in support of ISSUE's 2022 commissions. Enabling the fullscreen function is recommended. The length of the full presentation is approximately 20 minutes.
Wednesday, October 19th at 8pm ET, ISSUE is pleased to stream a new collaboration between Irmin Schmidt—legendary German pianist, conductor, composer and co-founder of experimental rock band Can—and NYC-based writer and visual artist Leah Singer. The duo’s new work will stream for free on ISSUE’s site.
This new piece will feature “Yonder,” a piece from a live document of a rare performance by Irmin Schmidt. “Yonder” is one of three piano pieces performed live on a partly prepared piano for the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival—in the way he was taught by John Cage himself—alongside pre-recorded soundscapes. "Yonder," which premiered at the festival, is a dramatic piece, dominated by the overwhelming sounds of church bells, a sort of “dies irai” - radical, emotional and fiercely poetic. Talking about the piece, Schmidt explains, “Church bells: A sound that has deeply and contradictorily touched me since my childhood. After the war we lived surrounded by ruins, only the church tower was intact and the bells would burst through the ruins every hour of the day. Watching Notre Dame burn on live TV [in 2019] evoked the memory. Three weeks later I started to write Yonder.”
Leah Singer notes, “While Irmin Schmidt’s live version of ‘Yonder’ from the Nocturne recordings conjures a clarity of immediate images from the clang of bells to the dragging of chains I am drawn more to the fuzzy past and the uncertain future where images float unfocused and undefined. It seems best to pair and ultimately detach this dynamic piece – with its piano chord punctuations and vibrating pauses – from its clear mnemonic place where bells can signal universal reactions with a set of ambiguous moving images that places the recognized sound of the bell into the realm of the unknown or re-imagined.”
Directed by Leah Singer.
After an extensive classical education as pianist, conductor and composer, Irmin Schmidt—who studied under Stockhausen and Ligeti—co-founded Can in the late 60s, combining classic new music with rock and jazz. Outside of his work with Can, Schmidt has released over a dozen solo albums and written an opera, Gormenghast, based on the novels of Mervyn Peake. In 2015, he was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for his contribution to art and culture, one of France’s highest honors, and in 2018 Faber Social published Can – All Gates Open, a two part book–the first section is Can’s biography, written by Rob Young, and the second section is Can Kiosk, a collage of diary entries and interviews edited and written by Irmin Schmidt. Irmin Schmidt’s 2018 album, 5 Klavierstücke, was a piano work using partly prepared (in the way he was taught by John Cage himself) and unprepared piano, recorded and produced by Gareth Jones in the South of France. This was followed in 2020 with Nocturne, a live album documenting his Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival performance earlier that year, which featured two new piano pieces. A recently updated collection of Irmin Schmidt’s solo work, Villa Wunderbar, was released on vinyl in 2020. Schmidt's sound-trips combine what normally competes and conflicts: rock, pop, jazz, classic, electronic, ambient, drum 'n’ bass, waltz, eastern. He is a musical alchemist.
Leah Singer, born in Winnipeg, Canada, lives in New York City. She is an interdisciplinary artist working in film, video, photography, printmaking, performance and installation. In the early 90s she began doing live film and video performances in collaboration with musicians–including her partner Lee Ranaldo–touring widely to The Reykjavik Arts Festival, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, The Rotterdam International Film Festival among many others. She continues to develop site-specific video installations intended to exist both as static artworks and components to live music performances. Her printmaking practice stems from an interest in breaking down the elements of photography and finding simpler forms. Her artist publications such as copy, are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She writes about art and culture and is a contributing editor and writer at Apartamento magazine. She recently presented a retrospective of past film work and a new live performance video at the 13th edition of the S8 Mostra de Cinema Periférico in A Coruña, Spain. Singer has worked with ISSUE previously as a participant in The Steve Circuit in 2020 plus also with Lee Ranaldo for Sight Unseen, an installation at ISSUE's 22 Boerum theater in 2016
During the Fall, 2022 ISSUE is continuing to commission artists as part of the Distant Pairs series, producing collaborative work at a time when the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has drastically impacted their ability to travel and perform, and altered the nature of collective work and performance. Pairing artists in disparate locations who cannot work together in “traditional” ways, the Distant Pairs series examines the collaborative process, methods of working, and partnership amidst these constrained conditions.
Full Distant Pairs Series Schedule*
Irmin Schmidt & Leah Singer: Wednesday, October 19th
DEBIT & Flora Yin-Wong: Thursday, October 20th
James Fei & Yan Jun: Wednesday, October 26th
Lucy Railton & Max Eilbacher: Thursday, October 27th - Presented online and as an ISSUE Member Event at Fridman Gallery
*All Times 8pm ET
