Suzanne Langille with Daniel Carter, Neel Murgai & Loren Connors

Saturday, January 19th, ISSUE opens its 2019 season with an impressive gathering of ISSUE alumni from across the organization’s history. Featuring a roving program of deeply experimental artists, the evening welcomes back multidisciplinary sound conceptualist and 2009 Artist-In-Residence Matana Roberts, composer and vocalist Haley Fohr of Circuit des Yeux, and vocalist Suzanne Langille performing alongside Daniel Carter, Neel Murgai, and Loren Connors.

Suzanne Langille stages a new performance focusing on the human voice as an instrument, and conversely on the instrument as an expression of the essence of the human voice. The performance includes emotive singing and speaking, contrasted with throat singing and overtones (Neel Murgai), interlaid with improvisational guitar (Loren Connors) and saxophone (Daniel Carter) -- all masters of their respective instruments.

Neel Murgai’s throat singing, with its deep vocal intonations and overtones, provide an intriguing contrast with Langille’s emotive vocals. He has a passion for frame drums, including the Persian daf, which he will engage at this event. Murgai also specializes in sitar, having studied with Pundit Krishna Bhatt. In addition to his work with Langille and the band Haunted House (Connors, Langille, Burnes & Murgai), Murgai has composed music for film and television, and performed with artists such as Bill T. Jones, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Cyndi Lauper, Sameer Chatterjee, and others. He co-founded the Brooklyn Raga Massive, an artists’ collective presenting Indian classical and cross-cultural Raga inspired music blended with other traditions.

Daniel Carter, who plays alto, tenor and soprano saxophones, flute, clarinet, trumpet, and piano, is a master of creative music whose work dates back to the mid-early 60s, and also to the mid-late 50s, when he sang in doo-wop groups, a crucial early phase of his music-making life. In 1981, he joined Other Dimensions in Music, a cooperative free jazz quartet with Roy Campbell on trumpet, William Parker on bass, and Rashid Bakr on drums. In the 1990s, he began recording with another free jazz quartet called TEST, with multireedist Sabir Mateen, bassist Matthew Heyner, and drummer Tom Bruno. But he has also worked with a wide range of avant garde and electronic musicians, such as Thurston Moore, DJ Logic, Loren Connors, Yoko Ono and others – and will do so at this event.

Loren Connors has been described as “one of the most inspiring underground musicians of the past 40 years” (Pitchfork). His uniquely original guitar music embraces the underlying aesthetics of blues, blues-based rock, Irish airs, and other genres – but while letting go of rigid forms. He names abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko as his most important influence. Connors has performed with artists such as Keiji Haino, Thurston Moore, John Fahey, and Kim Gordon, and avant blues band Haunted House (with Langille, Burns and Murgai). His records have been released on Family Vineyard, Northern Spy, Drag City, Recital, and other labels.