ISSUE's 2021 season programs are FREE to stream. In lieu of purchasing tickets, please consider making a $25 suggested donation (or an amount that you feel is meaningful) in support of ISSUE's Artist-In-Residence programs and Artist Fund. Enabling the fullscreen function is recommended. The length of this piece is approximately 25 minutes.
Thursday, March 11th at 8pm EST, violist Joanna Mattrey opens her 2021 ISSUE residency with the premiere of Thrum, a performance film piece that blends sound, light, poetry, and cinema to span personal, physical, and spiritual realms. This piece is co-presented with The Clemente, and will be streamed from the Flamboyán Theater in the Lower East Side. Featuring poet/filmmaker No Land, Thrum draws on myth as a means to disrupt cycles, find joy in the void, and seek the current through the internal and the universal.
Joanna Mattrey is a Brooklyn-based violist working in free improvisation, new music, and classical music. She uses extended techniques, modern compositional approaches, and electronic alterations to challenge the conventions of the viola. Drawing on her certifications in Alexander Technique, and Yoga, and an interest in Martial Arts, Joanna creates an embodied performance practice centered on ceremony and ritual. Her debut solo album, ‘Veiled,’ (Relative Pitch Records, 2020) explores the extreme sonic possibilities for viola and upcoming releases for Notice Recordings, Tripticks Tapes, Dear Life Recs, and Relative Pitch Records will include world premieres from her solo commissioning project, collaborative projects, and solo improvisations. Festival performances include Newport Jazz Festival, NYC Winter Jazz Fest, Lima Jazz Festival*, SxSW, and New Ear Festival. Residencies include Banff’s Composition Lab, MoMa PS1’s ALLGOLD, The Floor. Joanna has a B.A. in viola performance from the New England Conservatory (2009).
No Land is an artist, poet, filmmaker, photographer & otherwise– born and working in New York City. Her work has been recognized for continuing the lineage of downtown NYC artist counterculture, honoring an intuitive vow towards creation. In her visual creations & poet-performance work with musicians, No Land’s art evokes reverence for mystery and chaos. As a poet & vocalist, she has performed in collaborative works internationally at Jazzfest Berlin, Crossing Borders Festival in the Hague, Enclave Festival (Mexico City), LaMaMa Galleria (NYC), The Kennedy Center (DC), Roulette Intermedium, the University of New Haven, & on NYC street corners during the 2020 pandemic. In 2018, she released Authentic Artifice, an art-book of poetry and photographs, published by Newest York, with other forthcoming publications in 2021. She has been grateful to work closely with luminaries such as Anne Waldman, Daniel Carter, Heroes are Gang Leaders, Joanna Mattrey & other special spirits. More of her work can be found at www.maepoe.com
Wardrobe by: KAHLE
Special thanks to contributors: Kryssy Wright, Mickey Hoover, and Clemente Soto Velez.
This piece is part of a program collaboration between ISSUE Project Room and The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, two organizations that are committed to supporting the creation and presentation of experimental performance practices while sharing resources.
