Saturday, December 1st, ISSUE is thrilled to present a rare performance from Canadian artist and vocalist Mary Margaret O'Hara, performing in New York for the first time in ten years. O’Hara will give an improvised performance, embedded with songs from her legendary album Miss America, alongside a host of Special Guests, including Peggy Lee, Aidan Closs, Marcus O’Hara and a rare collaboration with Jim White. The evening opens with the ISSUE debut of San Diego-based contra/bass/clarinetist Madison Greenstone, an emerging artist who brings together low clarinets, DIY and kinetic instruments, contained feedback, homemade electronics, and subversive sounding practices.
Known for her spiritual and feverish songwriting, Mary Margaret O’Hara has influenced generations of experimental musicians through her unique combination of avant-garde techniques with elements of gospel, soul, and jazz. O’Hara’s vocal stylings are performed in overlapping arrangements with sophisticated instrumentation, meditative atmospheres, and cathartic outbreaks. Her singular approach develops an open songcraft where the intensity of a ballad can spontaneously pivot to rollicking rhythm-and-blues.
A noir masterpiece, O’Hara’s Miss America remains a cherished cult album, cited by Nick Cave, Neko Case, Tanya Donelly, the Dirty Three, and countless others as a profound and influential masterwork. At the time of its 1988 release, UK music weekly Sounds wrote that O'Hara's voice appeared "to be clinging white-knuckled to the bare face of life." Recently, O’Hara’s improvised performances stack words and melody in real time to develop radically deconstructed versions of her material.
"...it’s said often, but it rings true – truly spellbinding "Somewhere Over The Rainbow," throwing fragments of gibberish, a few seconds of an FM radio, or a voice of authority before singing with the full weight of her being. Heavily improvised, with sparse arrangements, O’Hara’s spellbinding delivery and between-song chat keeps me glued to my seat until the climax, and while it’s moving, it’s not without levity as O’Hara mumbles and jokes with the audience, operating on several levels at any given point. Her small band features Peggy Lee on cello, Aidan Cross on piano wire, drums & guitar, and her brother Marcus …. Whimpering, expressive, funny, soaring, and uncategorizable – she’s a true outsider artist, with a voice capable of seemingly conveying any conceivable thought.”
Undisciplinary artist Mary Margaret O'Hara is a graduate of The Ontario College of Art and Design who typecast herself with her 1988 album Miss America. All over the creative map, if there is such a map, she loves drawing, painting, her original calligraphy, free improv, hosting her brother's events, making people laugh and cry, acting in and composing for theatre and film, doing wordless backup for singers and musicians, making noises on the fly, off the cuff, and out of the ballpark, and being with her brothers and sisters. You know who you are.
Cellist, composer Peggy Lee makes her home in Vancouver, BC where she leads/co-leads several projects including the Peggy Lee Band, the Echo Painting, Film In Music, Waxwing (with Tony Wilson and Jon Bentley) and Handmade Blade. She has also collaborated extensively in theatre and dance. Peggy has received numerous awards including the Freddie Stone Award for integrity and innovation in music and the 2013 Vancouver Mayor's Arts Award for music.
Aidan Closs is a multi-instrumentalist who mixes the boundless creative energy of free improvisation with a formidable virtuosic technique of a studied classical musical background. He has dazzled audiences in his native Toronto with his inexhaustible sonic inventiveness and along with improvising alongside Ms O'Hara, he has collaborated with such esteemed luminaries as John Oswald and Michael Snow of the CCMC.
Marcus O'Hara, sculptor, artist, actor, storyteller, funnyman is most famous for being the owner and designer of the iconic art space and bar The Squeeze Club. He is also well known for his yearly Martian Awareness Ball held on St Patrick's Day. Marcus will play balloons. In a review from Le Guess Who Festival in Utrecht in November 2017, and her brother who “...plays a solo on the balloon that somehow, in this context, is hugely powerful. Whimpering, expressive, funny, soaring and uncategorisable.”
There are drummers and there are drummers. And then there is Jim White. Having first commanded international attention in the mid-1990s with the acclaimed Australian instrumental trio Dirty Three. Those who’ve worked with him – and all those he’s mesmerized as he plays - testify to his deft way with a rhythm, a downbeat, a jazz-fuelled wig out. His is a unique playing style forged in the then isolated Melbourne; a style that can sound like a full band one moment, and something stark and beautiful the next. PJ Harvey has said there is ballet in White’s light, precise touch. Will Oldham once remarked on White’s ability to dismantle a song, bit by bit, and rebuild it with his parts incorporated. The likes of Smog, Nick Cave, White Magic, Bonnie Prince Billy and Cat Power all know that there’s more to White’s drumming than mere accompaniment. His intuitive beats and singular approach have complimented the repertoire of the iconic Cretan lyra player, Psarantonis, and created sparks in his collaborations with the Cretan lute player George Xylouris. Whoever White is playing with, he is right there, present in the most inspirational sense. Greatly influenced by Mary Margaret and having worked with her on previous occasions, White has highlighted Mary Margaret as an artist who has had a profound impact on his music making.
Madison Greenstone is a contra/bass/clarinetist whose creative practices persistently question the boundaries between composer, performer, improviser and collaborator. Her musical making positions the nature of these less as nominators and more as predicates able to activate each other. These practices are actuated in several performer-composer collectives she is a part of including Shy Bather with Michelle Lou (low clarinets and electronics), Hermetic Art Party with Anthony Vine and Katy Gilmore (electric guitar, live projections, clarinets, tapes, DIY instruments), and we are like flowers with Bryan Jacobs (mechanical clarinets). Madison also collaborates with Celeste Oram within the idiom of experimental lecture recital focusing on reconstructing the performance practices of the anarchist improviser and clarinetist Gustav Renirs, and was a part of the creative team for the evening-length musical theater show, "Tautitotito: An Alternative Genealogy of Aotearoa New Zealand Music" (commissioned by and premiered at the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik 2018). As an improviser, Madison continues to develop an idiosyncratic performing practice with the low clarinets embracing their ability to resonate as polyphonic instruments, create complex beating patterns and emulate feedback.
