ISSUE Project Room celebrates the 20th Anniversary of its Artists-In-Residence (AIR) program throughout 2026 with performances by current residents and returning alumni. This anniversary season highlights AIRs whose work reflects the ongoing evolution of a much broader community of experimental artists who have helped shape ISSUE for over twenty years.
Saturday, June 13th, at 8pm, bassist and composer James Ilgenfritz (2011 AIR) returns to ISSUE, joined by Joe McPhee and AC Diamond for their first performance as a trio. Developed through years of individual collaborations, this event, supported by Antisocial Music, marks a new shared context for three artists deeply invested in improvisation as a mode of inquiry.
Working through collective improvisation, Ilgenfritz explores the relationship between timbre (the qualities of sounds) and gesture (the behaviors of sounds). Concepts such as empathy, neuroplasticity, and the fluidity of identity emerge not as fixed themes, but as conditions that inform the music’s unfolding. The trio’s work can also be seen as an expression of how Ilgenfritz’s worldview has expanded through his experiences with Aphasia and other complications from three benign brain tumors over the past fifteen years.
Central to the work is Ilgenfritz’s interest in lexical entrainment, a phenomenon where speakers adopt the same terms and expressions used by their partners. Influenced by the work of conceptual artist Charles Gaines, the trio approaches improvisation as a site where apparent oppositions — subjectivity and objectivity, materiality and conceptualism — are held in dynamic tension, and resolved through sound.
James Ilgenfritz is recognized in The New Yorker for his “characteristic magnanimity” and “invaluable contributions to New York’s new-music community,” and is founder and director of the Infrequent Seams record label and the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Ephemera Obscura, Inc. He performs internationally and has twice had residencies at John Zorn’s The Stone. He has composed for Ghost Ensemble, the New Thread saxophone quartet, HUB New Music, The Momenta Quartet, Hypercube, String Noise, and Thomas Buckner. He has performed in Asia, Europe, and throughout the United States. Recent albums include Automatic Thinking with vocalist Thomas Buckner, Altamirage with Pauline Oliveros, and #entrainments (with Gerry Hemingway, Angelika Niescier, and Nathan Bontrager). Ilgenfritz holds a PhD from University of California Irvine and degrees from UC San Diego and University of Michigan. Recent work reflects on experiences with Aphasia and other complications from two surgeries to remove benign brain tumors.
Joe McPhee grew up in New York, and is a multi-instrumentalist who has been performing within the creative and free jazz music world since the late 1960s. His energetic, demanding, and breathtaking playing is also intimate, sensitive, and profoundly thoughtful. McPhee learned trumpet as a youth, inspired by John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and Ornette Coleman. He later taught himself saxophone in his thirties. His first recording was in 1967, on the album “Freedom and Unity” with Clifford Thornton. He later became involved in the improvised music scenes in Europe, where he worked with Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker, and Mats Gustafson. Since the 1990s has performed often with younger generations from Chicago and New York, including Ken Vandermark, Joe Giardullo, and his longstanding group Trio X (with Jay Rosen and Dominic Duval).
AC Diamond (Anastasia Clarke) is a sound and media artist working across live performance, creative technology, and archives. Their work takes place in galleries, theaters, DIY venues, unconventional venues, and public spaces. Active since 2009, AC holds an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College and a BA from Bennington College, and currently serves as Adjunct Faculty in Music Technology at NYU Steinhardt. AC’s work has been supported by a NYFA/NYSCA Fellowship in Music/Sound (2022-23) and a Van Lier Fellowship at Roulette Intermedium (2020), as well as grants from NYSCA/Wave Farm, the Foundation for Contemporary Art, Antisocial Music, and the Queens Arts Fund. In 2025, they founded Critical Interval, an archival consultancy and project studio serving artists' archives.
