Events 2021

ISSUE is thrilled to commemorate the close of the 2021 season with a special year-end event featuring legendary New York band Gang Gang Dance, and writer/artist Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves. The performances will take place at the First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn Heights.

2021 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow Sami Hopkins presents her third program in Propositions from the deadWIP, featuring multi-instrumental musician, singer, and composer aden. This performance is co-presented with The Chocolate Factory Theater.

For his third commissioned work as a 2021 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence, sound/visual artist, improviser, and performer Austin Sley Julian presents “Corrosiv is Complete,” a collaboration with percussionist, vocalist, and composer Andrya Ambro and cellist, composer, and 2016 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Leila Bordreuil.

ISSUE is pleased to stream new work from Nairobi-born, Berlin-based sound artist KMRU. Known for entwining his compositions with field recordings from his native Kenya and the surrounding countries of East Africa, KMRU produces work uniquely positioned between the cultures of ambient and African musics.

ISSUE and The Poetry Project present the official launch for composer and poet JJJJJerome Ellis' The Clearing. The piece asks how stuttering, blackness, and music can be practices of refusal against hegemonic governance of time, speech, and encounter.

For the third and final program of her ISSUE Project Room Residency, violist Joanna Mattrey presents an evening of World Premieres written for Mattrey by Leila Bordreuil, Nick Dunston, Weasel Walter, and Lucie Vitkova.

ISSUE is pleased to present an evening of recent electroacoustic works from visionary composer, trombonist, and scholar George Lewis. At ISSUE, Lewis presents a “portrait concert” of four recent works performed by musicians Laura Cocks, Seth Parker Woods, Dana Jessen, Conrad Harris & Pauline Kim.

ISSUE is pleased to stream With Inner Sound, Truth, a new work by drummer and composer Savannah Harris. The piece, curated by Sami Hopkins (ISSUE’s 2021 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow), is a continuation of the With Womens Work series and responds to Ruth Anderson’s composition Silent sound.

ISSUE presents a free online program of renowned composer Annea Lockwood’s iconic Piano Transplants works: Piano Burning (1968), Piano Garden (1969-70), and Piano Drowning (1972). This streamed event features expansive documentation from three presented iterations of each piece.

ISSUE is pleased to present acclaimed poet Anne Waldman joined by bassist William Parker and saxophonist James Brandon Lewis as part of the 2021 Brooklyn Book Festival. The program also features sound and visual artist Caroline Partamian.

Leyya Tawil (ISSUE Project Room’s 2020 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow) presents “Mirages/ FRKTL & Tarkamt,” her fourth program in the NOMADIC SIGNALS series. Mirages is a program of sonic and visual illusory spaces composed and performed by FRKTL, British-Egyptian artist Sarah Badr, and Tarkamt.

ISSUE & Weeksville Heritage Center are pleased to present acclaimed musical collective Harriet Tubman, formed by Brandon Ross, Melvin Gibbs & JT Lewis at Weeksville’s historic site in Crown Heights, BK. The performance also features a first time collaboration between JJJJJerome Ellis & Holland Andrews.