News

An Intentional Spectacle: ‘HPSCHD’ at Eyebeam
Steve Smith in the New York Times

“I hate the harpsichord, it reminds me of a sewing machine,” the composer John Cage is reported to have said. Yet a commission fromAntoinette Vischer, a Swiss harpsichordist who specialized in modern music, prompted Cage to conceive one of his most audacious creations: “HPSCHD,” fashioned in collaboration with another composer, Lejaren Hiller.

A tumultuous spectacle introduced on May 16, 1969, and reflecting the spirit of its age, “HPSCHD” incorporates computer-mutated works by Beethoven, Chopin, Schoenberg and other composers; passages from Mozart’s “Musical Dice Game” (whose chance procedure Cage appreciated); and optional material, accompanied by Hiller’s taped microtonal computer music and a panoply of video artists on site.

Understandably, the elaborate work is seldom revived. But on Friday evening, three institutions — Issue Project Room, the Electronic Music Foundation and Eyebeam Art + Technology Center — collectively mounted an updated version of “HPSCHD” in Eyebeam’s Chelsea gallery. (In a surreal coincidence, an unrelated realization of the work was held the same night at the Cleveland Museum of Art.)

Joel Chadabe, the Electronic...

Volume Set To Fortissimo
Ben Ratliff in the New York Times on Keiji Haino

Keiji Haino lives among the class of improvisers who roam so far from what we usually call form — meaning, basically, rules — that they make you question whether what they’re doing is music. When you arrive at that question, generally, the joke’s on you. If you feel nothing for the music, you can walk away. If you feel something for it, you may start to notice that it possesses its own unity, its own rules. Anyway, it’s not Mr. Haino’s problem. “I am not an anarchist,” he has said. “I am anarchy.”

In America, where he performs infrequently, he’s mostly been known for playing electric guitar loudly and singing gesturally, charismatically, in Japanese or with wordless sounds: sometimes solo, and often as part of a kind of free-rock, pan-tonal power trio called Fushitsusha. (Now 60, Mr. Haino was imprinted by American psychedelic music — Blue Cheer especially — while growing up in Japan; hence his long hair and bangs, all-black clothes and sunglasses, his Gibson SG, his amps set at liquefaction level.) Clearly he’s interested in the brute force of sound, and the prime engine of that interest has seemed to be the guitar.

This past week...

Clarinetist Carol Robinson and cellist Frances-Marie Uitti are esoteric and virtuosic performers, equally at ease in the classical and experimental realms. Having worked in parallel for years, ISSUE brings the them together for a two-night residency on April 5th & 6th, 2013. Both composers themselves, the pair have worked extensively on original works and techniques that have expanded the fields of their respective instruments through electronics. Here they speak with composer Annie Gosfield (whose work they premiere on 4/5) about their many parallel years of collaborations.

Annie Gosfield: How did you two decide to do this project together, and what exactly is it?

Carol Robinson: It’s become clear as we’ve gotten to know each other over the years—as performers of Giacinto Scelsi’s music, and simply as musicians —that we share essential musical motivations and a focus on the expressive properties of pure sound, in addition to an interest in extending our instruments with electronics. This project makes sense to me, and I’m very pleased to continue our work together.

Frances-Marie Uitti: Yes, and I think adding to that, we are both classically trained and I think that’s evident in our command...

AMPLIFY 2013: rotation
by Christopher Nelson in The Brooklyn Rail

January 15 was the first night of AMPLIFY 2013: rotation, a two-night festival organized by ISSUE Project Room and Jon Abbey of Erstwhile Records. Before we get into the music, it’s important to recognize just why the organizers of the festival decided to set up shop in TriBeCa this year at the recently opened, cavernous art space appropriately known as TEMP. ISSUE Project Room is in a lot of trouble: even though there were always going to be major renovations needed at their opulent new outpost in Downtown Brooklyn, I.P.R. now faces unforeseen building maintenance issues that have left the venue homeless until 2015. Consequently, Ari Lipkis and Alex Ahn, co-founders of TEMP, were approached by Lawrence Kumpf, artistic director of I.P.R., to host AMPLIFY 2013 there. They graciously agreed to donate their space for the two nights, and fortunately for all parties the turnout was remarkable. Lipkis estimates that upwards of 170 people showed up for the first night. “We were overwhelmed by the turnout,” he later told me. Likewise, Jon Abbey, who has been organizing shows in New York for years, couldn’t remember ever having so many people at one of his events.

A lot of the fun...

In January 2013, ISSUE Project Room began work with architecture firm WORKac to develop the final design plans for the renovation of our historic theater space at 22 Boerum Place in Downtown Brooklyn. This milestone marked the initiation of a long-anticipated process to build a permanent home for experimental music and performance in Downtown Brooklyn, following the completion of our $4.3 million capital campaign in the summer of 2012. Designs for the space will be completed by the end of the year, with construction beginning in Summer 2014.

As part of the design process, ISSUE began working with a structural engineer to further investigate deficiencies in the theater ceiling, which left the space unsafe to occupy after a 50-pound decorative plaster element unexpectedly fell in August 2012. Through this analysis process, we were able to identify all hazardous elements in the structure and remove all unsafe portions of the ceiling through work with contractors in February 2013.

We are very pleased to announce that ISSUE Project Room will now return to its permanent home in Downtown Brooklyn for one full year of programming, to run until our scheduled construction in Summer 2014.

"This Spring really is a bright, new beginning for ISSUE”, says ISSUE’s Board Chair Tom Van Den Bout. “With initiation of serious design work by WorkAC...