Tuesday, July 8th at 8pm, ISSUE Project Room is honored to present a special recording session by composer, poet, and 2021 Artist-In-Residence JJJJJerome Ellis, joined by longtime collaborator S T A R R busby. This intimate event gives unique access to ISSUE Members and launches the 2025 summer membership campaign. Ellis will transform the limited capacity 22 Boerum Pl. theater into a live recording environment, and invites audiences to participate in an evolving sonic conversation rooted in the Black musical traditions of spirituals and hymns.
In this session, the artists will improvise new melodies and harmonies for songs such as “Glory, Glory” and “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.” The performance deepens work begun in an earlier private session in May, expanding Ellis’s ongoing exploration of gospel as a site for experimentation, memory, and temporal disruption.
Previously, Ellis’s work in 2021 engaged histories of Black fugitivity and marronage, including a site-specific performance at Weeksville Heritage Center with Holland Andrews. “As a Black stutterer,” says Ellis, “I wanted to study the stutter as an archive, and I focused on acts of flight by enslaved Black stutterers…In my musical practice, I’m interested in stretching, suspending, and dilating time. I want to participate in the rich lineages of Black music—and the ways Black musicians have shaped time to find joy, resistance, and healing in a world where capital and antiblackness violently structure time.”
During his remote residency at the height of the pandemic, Ellis created music and videos from his home in Virginia Beach, the Figure8 recording studio in Brooklyn, and the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming. “I feel like I’m carrying those places with me,” he reflects, “as I now begin creating music in this space.” Crafting a multisensory experience at ISSUE’s 22 Boerum Pl. theater, Ellis will also screen video works created in 2021 for the audience to engage with.
Now, Ellis will approach ISSUE’s architecture as an instrument in its own right, miking not only the ensemble of voices and instruments but the room itself, known for its resonant acoustic character. This spatial approach reflects his deep engagement with memory, movement, and sonic inheritance—inviting the audience to play a part in the unfolding act of creation.
ISSUE Members can RSVP to this event for free using their unique code at checkout, and enjoy exclusive access to all limited-capacity events. Members also receive a special $5 discount at the event on Aster of Ceremonies: Poems (2023) by JJJJJerome Ellis, published by Milkweed Editions.
JJJJJerome Ellis (any pronoun) is a disabled Grenadian-Jamaican-American artist, surfer, and person who stutters. The artist works across music, performance, writing, video, and photography. JJJJJerome has the great privilege of being married to poet-ecologist Luísa Black Ellis. They live in a monastery on a creek in traditional Nansemond and Chesepioc territory, aka Norfolk, VA. JJJJJerome dreams of building a sonic bath house!
S T A R R busby (they/she/he/we - all pronouns said with respect) is a Black experimental artist who sings, acts, composes, educates, and is committed to the liberation of all people. A recent recipient of a NYSCA grant, S T A R R leads a music project under their name which will release a debut project in 2026. She is also the lead singer of dance&b band People's Champs (www.peopleschampsnyc.com) which released their latest project, Show Up, in the Fall of 2023. S T A R R has also supported and collaborated with artists such as Gorillaz, Esperanza Spalding, Son Lux, X Ambassadors, Kimbra, Alice Smith, and Quelle Chris. Selected credits: Between Wave and Water (Composer and “Ghost”, Alethea Pace, The Metropolitan Museum of Art); If You Unfolded Us (Sable Elyse Smith, MoMA); (pray) (Ars Nova and National Black Theatre, A Singer, Composer, and Music Director) *Lucille Lortel Award Winner and NYT Critic’s Pick; The Beautiful Lady (La Mama, Boris) *NYT Critic’s Pick; On Sugarland (NYTW, co-composer) *Obie Award Winner; Octet (Signature Theatre, Paula) *Drama Desk Award Winner. All music available via Bandcamp and all streaming services. Love, gratitude and ashé to my blessed honorable ancestors, especially MME.
