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, November 7th at 8pm, ISSUE presents Caminos by 2026 Artist-In-Residence rocío sánchez. Developed throughout sánchez’s residency, Caminos provides a framework for musical ideas to emerge and unravel through improvisation, extended technique, and lighting design. For Caminos, sánchez is joined by friends and collaborators che ali (violin), Nava Dunkelman (percussion), and Henry Fraser (double bass).
The title points to the work’s central idea: a series of winding roads rather than a fixed destination. For sánchez, paths are where rituals can be found, from everyday routines to musical practices. Language itself becomes another route through the work, as caminos moves between Spanish, English, and Japanese in a game of meaning. Prepared sounds may even evoke the ways spoken language changes and morphs, while recurring motifs trace the piece’s many paths.
Caminos extends sánchez’s year-long exploration of sound, place, identity, and memory. Rather than resolving these threads into a tidy conclusion, the work leaves them open: paths continuing to branch, and be traveled together.
rocío sánchez is a mexican composer, performer, and educator whose work bridges improvisation, 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. sánchez’s sound world spans from the manipulation of the prepared cello, adapting it into a unique instrument that morphs throughout the performance—from soft kalimba-like tones to static, roaring wails created through the manipulation of VHS tape. Their work has been presented at Klangspuren Festival (AT), the Darmstadt Summer Courses (DE), Red de Ecología Acústica de México (MX), Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC RPI), Carnegie Hall, Roulette Intermedium, The Jazz Gallery, Americas Society/Council of the Americas, and The P.I.T. (Property Is Theft), 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 is based in Lenapehoking (New York City), upcoming recording projects include a collaborative trio with Laura Cocks and Kenneth Jiménez “Ghost Orchid” and a cello solo album.
che ali is an experimental interdisciplinary artist based in new york city. che primarily performs and creates music as a violinist and composer while also integrating objects, voice, movement, and poetry. their practice often deals with themes of memory, place, the quotidian, exploring humaness through a somatic lens and in dialogue with poetic possibility and conceptual inquiry. their work is deeply interested in the exposure of timbral details, resonance, introspection, interiority, and starkness, realized through improvisational performance, acoustic and electroacoustic sound worlds. che has collaborated with artists including Adama Delphine Fawundu, Deborah Jack, Torsten Lang, Dafna Naphtali & James Ilgenfritz. They have received commissions from Midori, The Museum of Modern Art, icarus Quartet, Castle of our Skins, Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy, and others. che holds a bachelor’s degree in violin performance from the boston conservatory at berklee. they are currently a DMA candidate at columbia university in music composition, where they’ve studied with Marcos Balter, George Lewis, Zosha Di Castri, and Georg Friedrich Haas. in their free time, che enjoys taking long walks, eating and cooking plant based food, thrifting, and traveling.
Nava Dunkelman is a percussionist and improviser based in Brooklyn, NY. Born in Tokyo, Japan and raised in a multi-cultural environment by an American father and Indonesian mother. Her musical approach is innovative and dynamic, combining virtuosity and intuition. Meticulous in an intrinsic way, she uses her distinctive sound palette to explore and give life to a vast spectrum of musical possibilities. Nava’s current projects are electro-percussion experimental noise duo IMA with Amma Ateria, and percussion duo NOMON with her sister Shayna Dunkelman. She also has performed and collaborated with Angélica Negrón, Brandon Seabrook, Du Yun, ÉMU (Maria Takeuchi), Fred Frith, gabby fluke-mogul, Ikue Mori, John Zorn, Pauchi Sasaki, William Winant, yuniya edi kwon, and many others. She has performed classical and contemporary pieces with the William Winant Percussion Group, Joan Jeanrenaud, Raven Chacon, San Francisco Girls Chorus, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and others. Her work has been recognized through notable awards and residencies, including Civitella Ranieri Music Fellowship (2026), Jerome Artist Residency (2024–2025) and Jerome Commission at Roulette (2023–2024), Hermitage Artist Retreat (2025), Loghaven Artist Residency (2024), create Award with the American Composers Forum (2023), and New Music USA Creator Development Fund (2022).
Double bassist and composer Henry Fraser has worked with artists including Ka Baird, John Zorn, Uniform, Mary Halvorson, Randall Dunn, and Joey Arias, and performed at venues such as Unsound Festival, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the National Concert Hall of Ireland. Fraser’s work begins with raw sonic materials that evolve through collaboration and engagement with musical forms that are often communal, ceremonial, and devotional. He approaches improvisation as a flexible framework shaped by personal histories and relationships. Since 2019, Fraser has focused on solo double bass, developing a practice centered on resonance, physical gesture, and extended acoustic inquiry. His latest solo album, Pneuma, was released by Kou Records in June 2026. A fellow of the Art OMI Music Residency and NYSCA/NYFA Finalist, Fraser has held residencies at Pioneer Works and The Stone. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone and The Wire.
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