Bassist and composer James Ilgenfritz (2011 AIR) returns to ISSUE, joined by Joe McPhee and AC Diamond for their first performance as a trio. This event marks a new shared context for three artists deeply invested in improvisation as a mode of inquiry.
ISSUE presents the premiere of three audiovisual compositions by Matt Mottel (2010 AIR). These works bring Mottel’s distinct artistic sensibility into dialogue with formative figures in his life and in New York’s avant-garde, tracing a lineage that is both deeply personal and central to ISSUE’s history.
Monarch Butterfly by rocío sánchez (2026 AIR) features Melissa Almaguer (tap dance and percussion) and Kenneth Jiménez (double bass). Together, the trio explores the elusive monarch’s migratory journey through sound and movement, with each instrument articulating distinct states of motion.
Isabella Thorpe-Woods presents "Envelop/e," her second program as ISSUE’s 2026 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow. Bringing together choreographers Jade Manns and Ella Dawn W-S for site-specific duets, they navigate presence and absence, repetition and rupture, and the tension between inherited geometries and shifting landscapes.
"Spiriting Off" is a new solo work by luthier Webb Crawford (2026 AIR) for electric guitar, tenor banjo, and five-string banjo.
ISSUE closes the summer season with the return of Matana Roberts (2009 AIR). Opening the evening, Ben Vida (2013 AIR) will perform music from his 2026 release, "Oblivion Seekers" with vocalist Sara Magenheimer.
Join ISSUE’s publishing imprint Distributed Objects at the world’s premiere event for artists’ books & objects. Two new LP releases coincide with the fair, Pete Swanson & Yarn/Wire: "Eliminated Artist", as well as Susan Howe & David Grubbs: "Thiefth", with limited edition letterpress print.
Calling himself a "devil worshipping free black man in the blues tradition," M. Lamar crafts sprawling operatic narratives of radical racial and sexual transformation. His newest music theater piece, DESTRUCTION is a futuristic salvaging of the negro spirit in a destroyed western world in flames.
Bill Orcutt performs a first-time duo set with Circuit Des Yeux, aka Haley Fohr. Known for her brooding, raw songwriting and singular four-octave voice, Fohr recently released a collaborative 7" with Orcutt. Legendary improvising guitarist Loren Connors, now active for 3 decades, performs solo. 7pm doors.
Ora Clementi play with subtleties of sensory perception, invoking a dreamlike context that hovers between musical performance and pure abstraction. Vito Ricci combines his recordings with live sound, performing on computer, modular, and “wrench guitar” with special guests Lise Vachon and Steve Dalachinsky.
Ariel Kalma’s boundary-blurring music spans free-jazz trips to infinite modular synthesizer and sax meditations. A pioneer in the field of modularly synthesized electronic music, he finds an ideal collaborator in Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, who has gained renown for modular synth and voice improvisations as Lichens.
Artists-In-Residence 2015
Incorporating video shot in both a modernist dollhouse and a melting spring forest, this performance and live essay moves widely among sites and texts, ranging from Anna Kavan’s slipstream novels to the nineteenth-century Caribbean and from fascist glacial cosmology to ghost ships allegedly crewed by cannibal rats.
Named for Georgia Hubley’s solo project Little Black Egg, this expanded big band features Hubley and Yo La Tengo compatriots Ira Kaplan and James McNew, joined by bassist Tony Maimone (Pere Ubu), and jazz mainstays Susie Ibarra, Daniel Carter, and Taylor Ho Bynum. Australian improvisor Oren Ambarchi plays solo.
Artists-In-Residence 2015
Artist, composer and improvisor C. Spencer Yeh opens his ISSUE residency with a solo performance celebrating the release of his first LP devoted entirely to the voice, "Solo Voice I – X" on Primary Information. Strategies from the recorded document serve as guidelines and a starting point for a new solo improvisation.