Stem-Flower-Root, the title of Michael Pisaro’s commissioned work for trumpet and sine waves, provides an apt metaphor for the FOR/WITH series at-large. Wooley describes how each of the composers featured have something in common with the structure outlined in Stem-Flower-Root; they demonstrate a power and creativity that can remain hidden, yet essential, in the structure of their works.

Issue presents the debut duo performance between Christian Wolff (small percussion) and Michael Pisaro (electric guitar).

FOR concludes with a performance of Annea Lockwood’s Bayou-Borne, for Pauline. The piece is dedicated to the late Pauline Oliveros (1932 - 2016) and follows a score based on a map of the six bayous converging near Houston, Texas. The work is performed by Christian Wolff (percussion), Ross Karre (percussion), Nate Wooley (trumpet), Michael Pisaro (electric guitar), Megan Schubert (soprano voice) and Jessica Pavone (viola).

ISSUE presents a performance of Christian Wolff’s Edges or Exercises featuring Nate Wooley (trumpet), Christian Wolff (small percussion and melodica), Michael Pisaro (electric guitar) and Kristin Nordeval (voice). In the liner notes for Wolff’s 10 Exercises, the American composer Frederic Rzewski describes the work as “not reproducing familiar forms, but revealing, behind these, life’s unpredictability. You could say it is political; improvisatory; concerned with collaborative, non-hierarchical forms of social organization; but you can’t really say what it is like (although John Cage came close when he said, after a performance of the Exercises in New York, that it was like the classical music of an unknown civilization).”