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, December 19th at 8pm, Numinosum closes ISSUE’s 2026 season and its celebration of the AIR program. Led by French cellist and composer Leila Bordreuil (2016 AIR), the work treats resonance itself as the primary instrument. Leading up to the performance, Bordreuil’s ensemble will meet at ISSUE’s 22 Boerum Pl. theater, responding to the evolving vibrational behavior of the room. The concert will explore how music can emerge through attentiveness rather than control, foregrounding collective deep listening and subtle activations of acoustic phenomena already present in the space. The ensemble features a number of past ISSUE residents from the organization’s history including Bordreuil, Katie Porter (bass clarinet), rocío sánchez (cello), and Zosha Warpeha (Hardanger d’amore). It also features Sean Meehan (percussion) and Nava Dunkelman (percussion).
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Leila Bordreuil is a French-American cellist, composer, improviser and sound-artist based in Brooklyn. She accesses concepts as diverse as Noise, contemporary classical, free jazz, and experimental traditions but adheres to none of them. Her music mixes deep melancholia with cathartic harsh noise-walls, and was described by the New York Times as “steadily scathing music, favoring long and corrosive atonalities.” Driven by a fierce interest in pure sound and inherent texture, Leila challenges conventional cello practice through extreme extended techniques and unorthodox amplification methods, to the extent she sometimes seems to be playing the P.A system rather than her cello. Her compositions frequently incorporate sound-spatialization by way of site-specific pieces and multichannel installations. Collaboration is central to Leila's musical practice; she has worked extensively with Sean Ali, Bookworms, Michael Foster, Vincent Jehanno, Kali Malone, Joanna Mattrey, Bill Nace (Body/Head), Lee Ranaldo (Sonic Youth), Zach Rowden (Tongue Depressor), Julia Santoli, Tamio Shiraishi (Fushitutsa) and Luke Stewart. She is a Jerome Foundation Artist Fellow (2021-23) and was a 2022 commissioned composer and artist-in-residence at the GRM, Paris. She regularly tours in Europe and the US, performing at prestigious concert halls and punk houses alike.
Nava Dunkelman is a Brooklyn-based percussionist and improviser born in Tokyo to an American father and Indonesian mother. Her work blends virtuosity with intuition through a distinctive, dynamic sonic palette. Her projects include the electro-percussion duo IMA with Amma Ateria and the percussion duo NOMON with her sister Shayna. She has collaborated with John Zorn, Du Yun, and Pauchi Sasaki, among others, and her work has been recognized by the Jerome Artist Residency and Commission at Roulette, and the American Composers Forum create Award, among others.
Sean Meehan is a drummer who most notably plays a pared-down kit often consisting of a single snare drum and cymbal, creating sounds that range from the subtle friction of a fork rubbing against a drum to tones that seem electronically-generated. These complex, sometimes subtle sonorities require a great deal of concentration for the performer and listener, foregrounding the act of listening just as much as the production of sound, and bringing the audience’s attention to both spatial acoustics and social interactions within a space. Some of Meehan’s early performances were at the Amica Bunker series for improvised music, located at the Anarchist’s Switchboard and later at ABC No Rio, New York. Since then, he has presented at many venues, including the Instal Festival, Glasgow, The Whitney Biennial, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and Goethe-Institut, Hanoi, but he primarily performs at small, informal, transient spaces and artist-run festivals.
Katie Porter is a clarinetist, performer/composer, writer, and artist. Her work is rooted in decades of experimental and community performance practices, where she explores how music can exist almost like landscapes or relationships, slowly altering our ability to perceive change, time, and space. Her debut solo bass clarinet album: Conversation No. 1/ Collecting Rocks from the Places We’ve Been (2025, Relative Pitch Records) is called “a revelation” by the Brooklyn Rail, and named “Best Contemporary Classical on Bandcamp Aug 2025”. Devoted to collaboration, Katie performs as Phase to Phase (with Lucio Capece), Eternities (with Bob Bellerue), MUD (with Anne Penders), MOONS (with Christine Tavolacci, Laura Cetilia, and Judith Berkson), among many other projects. Katie is recording a multi-year project for solo clarinet in Nancy Holt's land artwork, Sun Tunnels, in the remote Utah desert, her writings are published in Sound American, and her recent creative work can be heard in Brooklyn’s ISSUE Project Room archive, where she was 2024 Artist-In-Residence. She splits her time between New York and Utah with her three children.
rocío sánchez is a Mexican cellist, composer, improviser, and educator whose work bridges composition, field recordings, virtual animation, and collage. Their music explores the rich sonority of the cello, aiming to expand the instrument’s color by preparing it with recycled materials. Their work has been presented at Klangspuren Festival (AT), the Darmstadt Summer Courses (DE), Red Ecología Acústica México (MX), Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC RPI), Carnegie Hall, Roulette Intermedium, the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, and The P.I.T. (Property Is Theft, NYC), among others. They have also been a visiting artist at the California Institute of the Arts and the University of California San Diego where they have premiered solo and ensemble programs. sánchez received a BM from UABC México and a MM from SUNY Purchase College. They divide their practice between Lenapehoking (New York City) and Mexico, focusing on performer-composer approaches and cello pedagogy. Upcoming recording projects include a collaborative trio with Laura Cocks and Kenneth Jiménez titled “Ghost Orchid,” and a solo cello album. They are a 2026 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence.
Zosha Warpeha is a Brooklyn-based composer-performer working in a meditative space at the intersection of contemporary improvisation and folk traditions. Using bowed stringed instruments alongside her own voice, her long-form compositions explore transformations of time, tonality, and resonant space. She performs primarily on Hardanger d’amore, a sympathetic-stringed instrument closely related to the Norwegian Hardanger fiddle. While her work is informed by the cyclical forms and physical momentum of Nordic folk music, her solo practice "subvert[s] tradition not as a political act, but as a point of departure" (Peter Margasak, Nowhere Street). Her work has been supported by the US-Norway Fulbright Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. She was a 2025 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence.
