Wednesday, June 28th, ISSUE presents the collaborative debut of musician and vocalist Lesley Flanigan and cellist Mariel Roberts, together performing new work for amplified speaker instruments, cello, electronics, and voice.
Lesley Flanigan is known for her mesmerizing live performances that combine layered, ethereal vocals and improvisational experiments with her speaker feedback instruments: wooden boxes that incorporate contact microphones and basic electronics. Her performances slowly build from hushed vocal drones to dense tone clusters creating a textured, sculpted sound that the New York Times has called “choral hypnosis.”
Flanigan performs alongside Mariel Roberts, a member of the Mivos String Quartet and an innovative solo performer who has also collaborated with Alex Mincek, George Lewis, Tristan Perich, Eric Wubbels, and Dan Blake, and performing artists such as Saul Williams, Nate Wooley, Jen Shyu, Ambrose Akinmusire, and Eli Kezler
The evening also sees Brooklyn-based musician Lazurite (Megan Moncrief) performing her abstract rhythmic noise compositions. Moncrief layers her voice over synthesizer drones and chords on the ukelin, a 32-stringed American folk instrument that was “sold door-to-door as a sort of competitor to the Autoharp during the depression.” Moncrief describes the instrument as “difficult to play and ten times as difficult to tune [...] It lends itself to unusual tunings and there’s a freedom in exploring on an instrument with so little canon."
Curated by Lauren Rosati.
Lesley Flanigan is an experimental electronic musician living in New York City. Inspired by the physicality of sound, she builds her own instruments using minimal electronics, microphones and speakers. Performing these instruments alongside traditional instrumentation that often includes her own voice, she creates a kind of physical electronic music that embraces both the transparency and residue of process — sculpting sound from a palette of noise and subtle imperfections. Her work has been presented at venues and festivals internationally, including Sonar (Barcelona), The Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park (Chicago), the Guggenheim Museum (New York), Roulette (Brooklyn), The Kitchen (New York), TransitioMX (Mexico City), CMKY Festival (Boulder), the Roskilde Museum of Contemporary Art (Denmark) and KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin.
“Trailblazing” cellist Mariel Roberts (Feast of Music) is widely recognized as a deeply dedicated interpreter of contemporary music. Her work emphasizes expanding the technical and expressive possibilities of her instrument through close relationships with innovative performers and composers of her generation. Roberts has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician across four continents, most notably as a member of the Mivos String Quartet, as well as Wet Ink Ensemble and Ensemble Signal. She performs regularly on major stages for new music such as the Lincoln Center Festival (NYC), Wien Modern (Austria), Lucerne Festival(Switzerland), Cervantino Festival (Mexico), Klang Festival (Denmark), Shanghai New Music Week (China), Darmstadt Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Germany), and Aldeburgh Music Festival (UK). Mariel has been featured as a chamber musician on recordings for Innova, Albany Records, New World Records, New Amsterdam, Carrier Records, New Focus, and Urtext Records.
Lazurite (Megan Moncrief) performs atmospheric noise on synthesizer and the ukelin, a 32-stringed, 20th-century American folk instrument. Recent releases include a self-titled cassette on Fabrica Records and contributions to the Chants Beneath The Furnace Brook project (chantsbeneath.net) and the BC Studios 35th Anniversary Recordings. Megan is also a video artist, a music educator, and a synchronized swimmer.