MATA presents its 27th annual MATA Festival, this year in partnership with ISSUE Project Room at the limited capacity 22 Boerum Pl. theater. Featuring four concerts across four nights, this year’s festival explores the concept of INTERGALACTIC INFINITY: Music Between Spaces.
ISSUE Project Room hosts a free limited engagement for up to 10 ISSUE Members with RSVP with Thomas Ankersmit on his artistic practice with the Serge Modular analog synthesizer, his main instrument since 2006.
ISSUE Project Room is honored to present a special recording session by composer, poet, and 2021 Artist-In-Residence JJJJJerome Ellis, joined by longtime collaborator S T A R R busby. This intimate event gives unique access to ISSUE Members and launches the 2025 summer membership campaign.
At 2pm, ISSUE hosts a free public town hall organized by sound conceptualist & 2009 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Matana Roberts–the first in a nationwide series of gatherings.
Syncretics Series continues with solo performances by renowned Irish pianist Isabelle O’Connell and drum-set master Pheeroan akLaff. O’Connell is a stalwart of the contemporary concert music scene; akLaff imbues his work with ancient belief systems that address creativity as received rather than generated.
James K opens her residency with the premiere of ELEKTRA (Scream Through the Eyes of a Statue), a multimedia performance conceptualizing the female voice as an “X-ray to the bones of sound," with Eve Essex (winds and electronics), Via App (electronics), Leila Bordreuil (cello) & Eli V Manuscript (textual alchemy).
Pioneering electronics composer David Behrman collaborates with fiddler, improviser, and composer Cleek Schrey. Together, the two perform newly-developing situations: re-worked pieces from the past, embedded Appalachian fiddle tunes, and new compositions.
Julia Santoli opens her 2018 ISSUE residency with the premiere of two new works within her “Siren Sore” cycle: a mutant project of myriad form manifesting as visual project, recording album, and live performance through genre-crossing collaborations. Each new work features Tamio Shiraishi and Geng, respectively.
ISSUE is pleased to present the debut NYC showcase of Pacific City Sound Visions, an experimental label helmed by Spencer Clark. The evening features debut American performances from Francesco Cavaliere and Leila Hassan, as well as new work from Lieven Martens Moana and Clark’s own Typhonian Highlife project.
Félicia Atkinson presents a brand new work involving an imaginary dialogue between the poems of Francis Ponge and texts of her own, in French and in English, with electronics, voice and piano. The evening also features Afrikan Sciences & Sassacyprigo performing nuanced soundscapes conjuring different temporalities
During his 2018 ISSUE residency, choreographer and performer Will Rawls takes the multifarious figure of the cursor as a guideline to investigate his work that encompasses dance, writing, voice and objects. In this first research showing, Rawls focuses on the materiality of his voice as it runs through his writing.
Paul de Jong, cellist and co-founder of celebrated experimental duo the Books, and composer and violist Jessica Pavone’s String Ensemble each present new work -- spanning de Jong’s distinctly hybrid and emotionally-driven cello music, to Pavone’s uniquely physical compositions for strings.