Past Events

The first evening of FOR/WITH, a mini-festival featuring commissions and works by iconoclast composers Eva-Maria Houben, Katherine Young, and Ryoko Akama. Now in its third year, the series celebrates the collaborative process between performer and composer.

FOR/WITH concludes with a solo trumpet premiere composed for Nate Wooley by Sarah Hennies, followed by von da nach da by Eva-Maria Houben performed by Sara Schoenbeck, Mariel Roberts, and Russell Greenberg. The festival concludes with an ensemble performance of Sarah Hennies' Fleas

Rena Anakwe presents the final work of her 2019 ISSUE residency with the premiere of Ogwu (the healing), an immersive purification ritual inspired by the element of fire, staged in collaboration with lighting designer Kelley Shih.

ISSUE welcomes pioneering French composers Beatriz Ferreyra & Christine Groult, presenting new solo and collaborative work. The evening marks an exceptionally rare opportunity to hear the work of two major figures in the development of musique concrète, electroacoustic, and acousmatic music.

Charmaine Lee presents her third and final work as a 2019 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence, Laminals III, the last of three movements of a new long-form piece for solo voice. The evening concludes with a trio of improvised music featuring Tyshawn Sorey (percussion) and Ikue Mori (laptop).

ISSUE has invited musician Beverly Glenn-Copeland for an intimate artist talk, documentary screening, and short performance, accessible exclusively to ISSUE Members and all who support ISSUE during our Year-End Campaign.

Light and color improviser Lindsay Packer premieres her third commissioned work as a 2019 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence. In Call and Response: ECHOLOCATION, Packer collaborates with Alex Nathanson and Dylan Neely of Fan Letters in a nonlinear feedback loop of analog/digital chain reactions.

ISSUE is pleased to welcome back the enigmatic Jandek, the musical project of Corwood Industries, to Brooklyn. Jandek has performed in ISSUE’s previous locations in the Gowanus Silo and the courtyard of the Old American Can Factory. This marks Jandek's first performance at ISSUE’s 22 Boerum Theater.

ISSUE opens its 2020 season with legendary electronic music innovator Moritz von Oswald, 2017 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Antenes (Lori Napoleon), & American composer Britton Powell. At ISSUE, von Oswald presents Akklamation, a piece that sets out to unify the expansive musical paths of the electronics visionary.

Just The Right Height, the music project of interdisciplinary artist Keke Hunt, and Drumloop, the recent moniker of artist and musician Daffy Scanlan, each present new solo work. Both artists chart critical new contexts at the intersection of fragmented narrative, sound design, pop music and experimental composition.

ISSUE presents an audio/visual collaboration with interdisciplinary artists & curators Funneled Smoke, prolific composer Vito Ricci & vocalist Lise Vachon, and Philadelphia-based duo Pontiac Streator & Ulla Straus, with immersive 3-channel rear projection rig, live visuals & large-scale painting.

John McCowen presents compositions for solo contrabass clarinet for his inaugural performance as an Artist-In-Residence. These works present the concept of the instrument as an acoustic synthesizer. By sustaining multiple sounds simultaneously, the clarinet becomes a harmonic tube where sounds create beating harmonics.