Wednesday, September 24th at 8pm, as part of Celebrating David Behrman—a Fall series honoring the groundbreaking composer and 2025 ISSUE Gala honoree—ISSUE Project Room presents an evening of performances that illuminate Behrman’s enduring legacy of collaboration, technological innovation, and influence across generations of experimental music. The program features two works: Runthrough (1967–), originally developed with the Sonic Arts Union and performed on this occasion by friends of ISSUE, Frankie Mann with Daniel Fishkin & Cleek Schrey; and Open Space with Fast (2020–), a richly textural collaboration between David Behrman and artistic partner Fast Forward.
Runthrough was made in 1967 for the pioneering Sonic Arts Union (Robert Ashley, David Behrman, Alvin Lucier, and Gordon Mumma). It made use of homemade analog synthesizers and light-activated spatial distributors. Performed in the dark, it required four players, two operating synths and two using flashlights to move sounds around a four-channel speaker system.
In the late 1990s, the composer Mark Trayle, on the faculty of Cal Arts, had the idea that Runthrough could be realized as software for the small computers that had by then become fast enough to handle interactive audio. Together with his students, he performed and recorded his new realization.
The current version made in 2016, uses 21st century technology for the spatial distribution. Three people can play it, one on laptop, two on flashlights. In tonight’s performance, the laptop is handled by Frankie Mann and the flashlight performers are Daniel Fishkin and Cleek Schrey.
Open Space with Fast grew out of Behrman’s extensive work history with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, specifically a 2020 remote collaboration with over 60 former members of the MCDC—produced during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic as a video gift for Jasper Johns’ 90th birthday. Composed of solitary audio and video contributions, the project reflected a deeply collaborative spirit despite global pandemic restrictions. Elements from Behrman’s contribution to that work later found their way to an installation with Bob Bielecki for Harvestworks and a string quartet/electronics piece presented at a 2024 Berlin festival honoring Alvin Lucier.
In Open Space with Fast, percussionist and composer Fast Forward activates a constellation of unconventional objects and resonant materials, improvising within a dynamic electronic environment shaped by Behrman’s sound materials. This performance reflects their decades-long dialogue around technology, listening, and shared experimentation.
Frankie Mann and Fast Forward were among the gifted young artists who worked with Behrman at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills in the 1970s. That innovative, path-breaking program was directed by Robert Ashley. Daniel Fishkin and Cleek Schrey began collaborating with Behrman after participating together at another vital experimental music hub—Wesleyan’s graduate music program headed by Ron Kuivila.
For more information and tickets to ISSUE’s 2025 Gala celebration please contact ISSUE's Director of Advancement & Administration, Monica Pabelonio at monica@issueprojectroom.org, or visit our website. If you can’t attend, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution. A gift of any size helps to support our programs and community of underserved artists.
David Behrman is a composer and artist active since the 1960s. Over the years he has made sound and multimedia installations for gallery spaces as well as musical compositions for performance in concerts. Most of his pieces feature flexible structures and the use of technology in personal ways; compositions rely on interactive real-time relationships with imaginative performers. Together with Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma, Behrman founded the Sonic Arts Union in 1966. He had a long association with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as composer and performer, created music for several of the Company’s repertory pieces, and was a member of the Company’s Music Committee during its last years. Pictures, with its music Interspecies Smalltalk, won the Olivier Award in 1985. It remained in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company repertory from 1984 to 1989, and was revived in 2002. Behrman has received grants from the NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, the Japan-United States Friendship Commission, the D.A.A.D., the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Henry Cowell Foundation. He was a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in 2016. Audio recordings of his works are on the XI, Lovely Music, Pogus, New World, WERGO, Black Truffle Records and Alga Marghen labels.
The ears of Daniel Fishkin—a composer of instruments—are ringing. Daniel studied with composer Maryanne Amacher and with multi-instrumentalist Mark Stewart. Daniel’s lifework investigating the aesthetics of hearing damage has received international press (Nature Journal, 2014); he has also been awarded the title of “tinnitus ambassador” by the Deutsche Tinnitus-Stiftung. He is the only luthier that worked directly with the daxophone’s inventor, Hans Reichel, and he takes instrument commissions worldwide from artists who seek to work with this instrument. Daniel received his MA from Wesleyan University, and earned his PhD at the University of Virginia. He has taught courses on instrument design and creative coding at many universities, including most recently at Ramapo College of New Jersey, where he is Assistant Professor of Music Production.
Fast Forward is a UK/US composer and musician known for creating bold, genre-defying works that merge experimental music with live performance. He studied music at Mills College with David Behrman and Robert Ashley (1976–78). His work embraces non-traditional instrumentation and physical gesture—often blurring the lines between concert and theater. His live performances—solo or ensemble—turn everyday objects into instruments, revealing a tactile and visual musical language. His internationally acclaimed Feeding Frenzy—a “culinary concert” involving five musicians, five cooks, five waiters, and the audience—has been performed across Europe, China, and the U.S., including at the Museum for Contemporary Art in Berlin and Finland’s Time of Music Festival. He was a featured performer with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company under the musical direction of Takehisa Kosugi, and he directed and performed in Robert Ashley’s iconic opera That Morning Thing at The Kitchen. His music has been commissioned by Inventionen and DAAD (Berlin), the Whitney Museum (New York), soundpocket (Hong Kong), among many others. Residencies include DAAD (Berlin), the Asian Cultural Council (Japan), and the Emily Harvey Foundation (Venice).
Frankie Mann composes music for electronics, acoustic instruments and field recordings. Her music explores cultural memory, feminism, tech, and classical music. In high school, she became mesmerized with electronic music and learned how to build synthesizers from Popular Electronics. She studied classical piano and electronic music at Oberlin Conservatory, computer music at the Instituut voor Sonolgie in Utrecht, NL (Fulbright fellowship), and composition at Mills College with David Behrman and Robert Ashley. She ran a new music radio show “Blank Spot Punch” with Henry Kaiser at KPFA-FM in Berkeley, CA. Frankie lived in New York from the late-1970s to the mid-1990s, where she played music and wrote audio software for Eventide Clockworks, Atari, Children's Computer Workshop, and The New York Hall of Science. Her work has been featured at Roulette Intermedium, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, Festival d'Automne, and other venues.
Cleek Schrey is a fiddler, composer, and filmmaker from Virginia, now based in NYC. He plays folk and experimental music on a range of instruments including the hardanger d’amore, a violin with sympathetic strings, and the daxophone, a wooden idiophone designed by Hans Reichel. Frequent collaborators include electronic music pioneer David Behrman, the viol da gamba player Liam Byrne, traditional fiddle icon Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, and composer Alvin Lucier. He is currently Pioneer Works Sound Artist-in-Residence on Governors Island.
