Wednesday, October 4th from 7-10pm, ISSUE celebrates its 20th Anniversary at our 22 Boerum Pl. theater with projections of work commissioned from Heroes Are Gang Leaders, a literary free jazz ensemble of writers, artists and musicians. The performance titled The Day We Gave The Globes Back, A Sing Along!, was recorded and streamed as a part of the 2020 Brooklyn Book Festival featuring an expansive fourteen member band that included the full group’s line up as well as multiple embedded solos and ensemble formations of the group’s various members.
The concert featured solo performances, duets, trios, quartets, dance and poetry by the members of Heroes Are Gang Leaders (HAGL), winners of the 2018 American Book Award for Oral Literature, culminating in a full band performance and celebration of the new CD, Artificial Happiness Button (Ropeadope Records 2020). Once described as “Parliament Funkadelic playing the Archie Shepp Songbook,” HAGL is a Literary Jazz Band comprised of poets, professors, musicians and artists known for recontextualizing the content of works by literary figures such as Amiri Baraka, Bob Kaufman, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ntozake Shange, Etheridge Knight into original homages and performances that highlight the ever-growing possibilities within the literary work while infusing it with their own brand of patterned, wild, and Free Jazz. “Even during difficult times such as these, HAGL is committed to the continuance of community and believes that the creation of collaborative energies between performers and audience is a healing and enlightening force, one capable of unearthing new social and spiritual paradigms especially during times of Social Distancing. With an eye on the HAGL mission of the renewal of the lost aspects of the Oral Literary Tradition, HAGL wishes to produce hope as well as creatively empower those who might feel as if they have been stripped of their individual rights and natural freedoms. To this end HAGL would like to invite the viewers and listeners to "sing along" while not falling prey to believing everything we are taught to sing.” — Thomas Sayers Ellis / James Brandon Lewis
PERSONNEL:
Thomas Sayers Ellis / poet
James Brandon Lewis / tenor saxophone
Melanie Dyer / viola, vocals
Luke Stewart / bass
Randall Horton / poet
Alexis Marcelo / keyboards
Bonita Lee Penn / poet
Nettie Chickering / voice
Arin Maya Lawrence / vocals
Devin Brahja Waldman / alto saxophone, synthesizer
Brandon Moses / guitar
Patrick Holmes / clarinet
Tcheser Holmes / drums
Miriam Parker / dance
Between Friday, Sep 29th and Saturday, Oct 7th, ISSUE invites audiences to experience presentations of works - originally commissioned for online distribution during the COVID-19 pandemic - at the 22 Boerum Pl. theater. The commissioned work will be shown as projected installations, coupled with a variety of artist talks, for a limited capacity environment of 74 people.
In response to our suspension of in-person programming during the onset of the pandemic, ISSUE commissioned more than 250 artists to present free online programs through series such as: Isolated Field Recordings; The Steve Circuit; Heroes Are Gang Leaders; Distant Pairs; With Womens Work; and 90 presentations of Alvin Lucier’s I am sitting in a room amongst others. Our commitment to support these artists mattered more than ever during the pandemic given the challenges that artists and many small cultural organizations across NYC experienced and still currently face. ISSUE is pleased to present these works as installed projections for audiences to experience in person, in ISSUE’s home theater, gathering with our community in celebration of the organization’s 20th Anniversary.
These initiatives complemented ISSUE’s work publishing archival documentation on online platforms currently collected and streamable on our expansive Archive page on the ISSUE website. ISSUE currently maintains a publicly accessible archive of hundreds of published video and audio recordings. These materials are a freely accessible collection of performance documentation that spans our recent and historic work.
During these presentations Laurie Berg’s (Sports) Bar-In-Residence will be activated as well as a lobby installation by Eva Davidova: Vinson and Catherine in the Garden, a series of augmented reality prints.
This Fall marks the 20th Anniversary of ISSUE and will be celebrated with a series of commissioned programs, orbiting around our annual Gala and affiliated Benefit events. During the Anniversary celebration, between phases of renovation, ISSUE returns to our 22 Boerum Pl. theater for a special series of twenty limited-capacity events. Featuring artists from across our history as well as new projects, these gatherings - including our 20th Anniversary Gala - present an opportunity to celebrate and support ISSUE as we continue an ambitious calendar of programming. Join us in recognizing this important milestone in our history.
These gatherings are free with RSVP, and members retain exclusive access to all limited-capacity events until sold out.
Heroes Are Gang Leaders was founded in 2014 by poet, photographer and professor Thomas Sayers Ellis and saxophonist James Brandon Lewis as a tribute to the late poet, activist and Jazz Critic Amiri Baraka. Ellis and Lewis opened for Baraka at the St Marks Church (The Poetry Project) in 2013. HAGL is a Literary Free Jazz Ensemble of writers, artists and musicians dedicated to the sound extensions of literary text and original composition. Between 2014 and 2019 HAGL recorded six projects: “The Amiri Baraka Sessions,” “The Avant-Age Garde I AMs of the Gal Luxury,” “Highest Engines Near / Near Higher Engineers,” “Flukum (Your Book Sucks)” and the yet to be released “POPschutz” (recorded in Berlin, Germany) during HAGL’s first European Tour. “Artificial Happiness Button” finds HAGL moving from tribute-mode into the wider realm of integrating and expanding, in meaning and mode, what it means to be a literary jazz band once described as “a version of Funkadelic playing the Archie Shepp song book.”
All participant biographies can be found in our Archive.
