The second presentation of Feelings Are Rooms features a continued investigation of the unique architectural acoustics of ISSUE's theater space. Kabir Carter draws upon his recent research on spatial acoustics in anechoic rooms and underwater acoustics to produce a temporary sound installation.
ISSUE commemorates the close of the 2017 season with a special year-end event with acclaimed composer and electronic musician Tyondai Braxton and extended technique vocalist, composer, and performer Like A Villain (Holland Andrews), co-presented with BOMB Magazine.
Antenes’ ISSUE residency culminates in the presentation of a time-based “audio museum” reflecting her visits to the NOKIA Bell Labs Archives -- a research process that has run parallel to her practice of appropriating antique or otherwise obsolete objects in ways that reference and extend their original functionality.
December 2nd, Byron Westbrook premieres Interval/Forum. The work completes a series of conceptual environments that collaborate with audience perception and participation, making use of the theatrical setting of Irondale Arts Center to focus the perception of audience presence as a dynamic performance element.
ISSUE is pleased to present the first-ever duo performance between guitarists Loren Connors and Oren Ambarchi: an occasion intersecting their parallel championing of the instrumental abstraction of the guitar, and their independently meaningful performance histories at ISSUE. The event is free for ISSUE Members.
For his third and final project as 2017 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow, DeForrest Brown Jr. presents Xenopoietic Deviations, a radical new lecture-as-performance, composed in segments by theorist Inigo Wilkins and Berlin-based digital artist and producer Lars “TCF” Holdhus.
November 2nd ISSUE presents a program introducing composer Alireza Mashayekhi's unflinching experimentalism to NY audiences with three world premieres, for piano, violin, and prepared tape, performed by Cyrus Forough and Ramin Amir Arjomand. The incomparable Margaret Leng Tan and soprano Daisy Press also perform works.
Thursday, November 30th, ISSUE is pleased to premiere Berlin-based composer Bryan Eubanks’ “Object V” and composer and percussionist Sarah Hennies’ “Contralto,” two new works employing unique compositional strategies.
In tribute and commemoration of the artistic contributions of Romanian composer, pianist, and conductor Ana-Maria Avram (1961-2017), ISSUE presents a “tombeau” program of Avram’s works performed by Either/OR, featuring Mario Diaz de Leon, Vasko Dukovski, Russell Greenberg, Margaret Lancaster, and Zach Rowden.
November 9th, our series observing the work of Alvin Lucier continues. Oren Ambarchi and Gary Schmalzl reprise 2013 piece Criss-Cross. The Ever Present Orchestra perform NY premieres of Two Circles and Double Cross-Hatch. Lucier stages his paradigmatic 1970 work I am sitting in a room.
ISSUE presents the first of two days observing the work of revolutionist composer Alvin Lucier. The Ever Present Orchestra stages two recent Lucier works: Braid and Hanover. Joan La Barbara gives the American premiere of Double Rainbow. Lucier himself performs Bird and Person Dyning.
Artist, designer and composer Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste continues his 2017 ISSUE residency, collaborating with interdisciplinary artist LaMont Hamilton at ISSUE Project Room on Sunday, October 8, 2017. The performance is the collaborative duo’s fifth performance around Julius Eastman’s 1979 composition, “Evil Nigger.”
Butch Morris (1947-2013 ) invented a new approach called "conduction," a way of composing in real time by conducting improvising musicians. To celebrate his legacy, ISSUE and the London Review of Books present a panel moderated by Adam Shatz, featuring Greg Tate, George E. Lewis, Mary Jane Leach and Brandon Ross.
ISSUE Project Room and the Board of Directors invite you to join us for our annual Gala, taking place on October 18, 2017. The evening honors Brooklyn Borough President Eric L. Adams, pioneering composer Éliane Radigue, and artist R. Luke DuBois and supports the Organization's commitment to experimental performance.
September 30th, ISSUE presents WITH, the second night of FOR/WITH. The evening premieres Michael Pisaro's Stem-Flower-Root and features works by Annea Lockwood and Christian Wolff, as well as a roundtable panel with the mini-festival's composers and performers.
ISSUE is pleased to present FOR, the first evening of FOR/WITH, featuring new commissions with some of America’s most iconoclastic composers and performers. The evening premieres a new piece by Christian Wolff, his debut duo with Michael Pisaro, as well as works by Annea Lockwood and Ashley Fure.
Friday, October 20th, ISSUE presents a public performance celebrating the work of pioneering French composer Éliane Radigue, presented as a part of The Austrian Cultural Forum’s Moving Sounds Festival. The evening spans her acoustic and electronic compositions and features the world premiere of OCCAM RIVER XVI.
For his second project as 2017 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow, DeForrest Brown Jr. presents the premiere of Elevator to Mezzanine, a new commissioned project between Brown and Berlin-based artist, musician and writer Steven Warwick taking place at Secret Project Robot.
Thursday, September 14th, ISSUE presents an evening of screenings, talks, and discussion with storied film activist Jonas Mekas and writer and BOMB Magazine contributor Charity Coleman as a part of Brooklyn Book Festival.
Saturday, September 9th at Abrons Art Center Studio G05, Byron Westbrook continues his ISSUE residency with “Threshold Variations,” an immersive environment focusing on the synaesthetic play between light amplitude, sound volume, and the threshold of perception.
ISSUE's 2017 fall season opens at the First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn Heights with celebrated process-musician William Basinski, Brooklyn-based artist Selwa Abd’s Bergonist project, and Houston-born digipoet YATTA each in solo performance. Join as an ISSUE Member at any level and get a free ticket.
Thursday, July 6th, New York artist Evan Caminiti and San-Francisco-based filmmaker Paul Clipson present an audiovisual collaboration drawing from Caminiti’s most recent album Toxic City Music. Iranian-born, NYC-based producer, violinist, vocalist and multi-media artist SADAF also presents new work.
Laurel Halo presents new work from her singularly elusive new album Dust, deeply mediated by technology, media, and memory. Thomas Brinkmann also presents the premiere U.S. live staging of renowned 2000 album Klick. Producer/composer Derek Piotr opens with a live version of his 2016 record Drono.
Tuesday, July 18, ISSUE and Harvestworks present Stephan Moore, Scott Smallwood and Suzanne Thorpe dedicating performances to the experimental legacy of Pauline Oliveros, presented as a part of World Listening Day 2017. The evening features acoustician Paul Geluso’s 3D Sound Object speaker system.
Friday, July 14th, ISSUE and Harvestworks present composer and synthesis pioneer David Rosenboom and vocalist and sound artist Viv Corringham each premiering new pieces focused on approaching acoustician Paul Geluso’s immersive 3D Sound Object.
ISSUE presents the collaborative debut of musician/vocalist Lesley Flanigan and cellist Mariel Roberts, together performing new work for amplified speaker instruments, cello, electronics, and voice. The evening also sees musician Lazurite (Megan Moncrief) performing abstracted rhythmic noise.
Thursday, June 15th, ISSUE presents a rare evening with James Fei (analog electronics) and Kato Hideki (bass, electronics) in duo performance. The evening also sees the debut trio performance between Fei, Kato and and veteran NYC percussionist Sean Meehan.
Friday, June 2nd, ISSUE presents two generations of artists working between the boundaries of improvisation and composition: saxophonist, composer and improviser Chris Pitsiokos and celebrated musician, composer and installation artist Miya Masaoka. The two artists present new work in solo and duo performance.
ISSUE presents Peter Brötzmann and Heather Leigh -- two fearless musicians capable of extreme dynamics and subtleties. Together they bring countless decades of experience at the cutting edge of speed-of-thought improvisation and deep lyrical soul, furthering their work into an "unrelenting, caterwauling hate-bomb."
Thursday, May 25th, Antenes opens her 2017 residency with new work incorporating research on the unique audio terrain of early, analog telephone pioneers and hackers. The performance features found field recordings threaded into the electro-acoustic qualities and electronic signals from her handmade switchboard synths.
For her ISSUE debut, vocalist Ka Baird presents Espylacopa (A Reversal In Three Acts), an interdisciplinary collaborative work with Camilla Padgitt-Coles (light design/synthesizer), Muyassar Kurdi (movement), Chris Penalosa (modular synthesis), Roshni Samlal (tabla) and Sandy Gordon (vibraphone).
Join ISSUE for an intimate benefit performance with The Necks on Wednesday, February 22nd over cocktails, and hors d'oeuvres from Rucola. Following the performance, the group appears in a Q&A conversation moderated by Nate Wooley. The evening supports rare appearances by international artists at ISSUE during 2017.
Artist, designer and composer Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste opens his ISSUE residency with a collaboration with LaMont Hamilton on Friday, May 5 and Saturday, May 6, 2017. The performance is the collaborative duo’s fourth performance around Julius Eastman’s 1979 composition, “Evil Nigger."
Byron Westbrook opens his 2017 residency with an iteration of Interval/Habitat -- a technique for site-specific intervention within a social environment. The piece plays a looping sequence of light and sound “scenes” that impose a time-based narrative over all activity within the space.
ISSUE co-presents the opening performance of Ende Tymes VII on Thursday, April 27th featuring performances from Joe Colley, Jenny Gräf, TRNSGNDR/VHS, and a duo between Denis Rollet and Francisco Meirino. The festival is well-known for balancing cutting-edge avant-garde music traditions and DIY gear manipulations.
Friday, April 7th, ISSUE gathers artists who all have shared with Tony Conrad a friendship and a deep devotion to music and art. In honor of Tony, Spectral Density is an evening of music with original works by Henry Flynt, Dan Conrad, and a Arnold Dreyblatt, as well as a performance of one of Tony's pieces by Lary 7.
Kabir Carter opens his residency with a performance introducing his practice to the historic architecture of ISSUE’s 22 Boerum Theater, performing across the threshold of acoustic feedback and executing simple tasks to activate and excite the hard surfaces of the space’s floor, walls, columns and ceilings.
Jazz leaders Ken Vandermark & Nate Wooley perform in duo, returning to 22 Boerum for the first time since ISSUE’s 10 Years Alive On The Infinite Plane. Their music combines composition and improvisation, and explores the potential of modern melody and rhythm posited against abstract sound and texture.
Known for his electronic improvisation and use of infrasound, Mario de Vega works in a variety of media all coinciding in an impressive collection of site-specific sonic interventions. Opening the evening, composer and installation artist Cecilia Lopez presents RED -- a work investigating unstable feedback systems.
Leila Bordreuil premieres a collaborative piece developed with Austin Julian. Featuring Tamio Shiraishi & Julia Santoli, the work combines music and performance art within an operatic structure using homemade instruments / creative amplification methods. An improvised set by Bordreuil and guitarist Bill Nace opens.
Well known for performing with the electroacoustic improvisational unit Supersilent, Norwegian artist Helge Sten’s music as Deathprod has been highly influential in its prescient formulation of a dark sonic palette that has become widely celebrated in contemporary experimental music.
Filmmaker/photographer Jem Cohen established Gravity Hill Sound + Image in 2014 as a forum for exploring film with live soundtracks. With guitarist Guy Picciotto, drummer Jim White, master lute player George Xylouris, and Cohen mixing audio from the films, the ensemble will experiment at ISSUE with new films.
Saturday, February 25 ISSUE presents a durational performance between The Necks and a host of invited special guests (to be announced). Starting at 4pm, this long durational, single piece will contain overlapping sets featuring special guests, friends and colleagues of The Necks featuring six hours of continuous music
Friday, February 24th The Necks appear in a standalone performance showcasing their psychic coherence and renowned style of conjuring the mesmerizing, oceanic vistas the trio has embarked upon over their stunning experimental tenure.
For his first project as 2017 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow, DeForrest Brown Jr. organizes the US premiere of Quantum Natives’ expansive sonic universe. Established in 2013 as an online world-building platform, the international collective focuses on digital music and visual art.
ISSUE brings together venerable improviser Loren Connors, vocalist and flutist Isobel Sollenberger, best known for her fronting the celebrated Philadelphian psych band Bardo Pond, and poet Steve Dalachinsky for a layered evening of guitar, flute and poetry.
Fearless improviser, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist Anaïs Maviel presents a special solo set and an extended collaboration with acclaimed bassist, Michael Bisio, for her debut performance at ISSUE. Maviel first performs a solo vocal set, accompanying herself on the surdo (Brazilian drum) and n’goni.
ISSUE presents two generations of artists working in the medium of computational music: pioneering computer musician and scholar Curtis Roads, whose contributions to electronic music and computer music are vast, as well as composer, artist, and curator Eric Frye.
Thursday, February 23rd, Chris Abrahams, Lloyd Swanton and Tony Buck each perform solo sets showcasing their distinct instrumental approaches that emphasize independent performative contributions to their collaborative music.
Drawing its participants from the first 10 years of ISSUE Project Room’s Artists-In-Residence Program, AIR Alumni Collaborations is a performance that brings together former ISSUE resident artists in striking new combinations.