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.
Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellowship 2022
2022 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow Theodore Kerr + Housing Works & What Would an HIV Doula Do?, present I, OF COURSE, WAS LIVID. The performance features testimony that women living with HIV provided the CDC as part of the activism done to pressure the US government to create a more inclusive definition of AIDs.
Sound artist and musician Sydney Spann presents their final presentation as an ISSUE Artist-In-Residence with a live performance alongside poet and musician Kiera Mulhern at MITU580 in Gowanus, Brooklyn
Choreographer and composer Tatyana Tenenbaum continues her 2022 ISSUE residency with Garment of the Interior, a first public sharing of a new project that emerges from a decade of research into the continuum between voice and movement.
Saturday, November 12th at 8pm ET, at The Queens Museum, Dion TYGAPAW McKenzie presents their third and final work in progress presentation of Devil Woman (Obeah Woman). The piece is an opera in three parts developed as a 2022 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence.
ISSUE in partnership with Harvestworks and Center for Performance Research is pleased to present As If Reality?, a new work from multi-disciplinary artist, musician, designer and 2022 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Selwa Abd (Bergsonist).
Distant Pairs Series
ISSUE is pleased to invite Members to a reception and presentation of the first ever collaborative piece between cellist and composer Lucy Railton and intermedia artist Max Eilbacher. The installation of the commissioned collaboration will be presented at Fridman Gallery in the Lower East Side.
Distant Pairs Series
ISSUE is pleased to stream a new collaboration between Oakland, California-based composer, synthesist, saxophonist and electronic musician James Fei and Chinese musician and poet Yan Jun, who is based in Beijing.
Distant Pairs Series
ISSUE is pleased to stream the debut collaborative presentation between New York-based producer and composer Delia Beatriz (DEBIT) and London-based sound artist and writer Flora Yin Wong. This commissioned work will be the first ever collaboration between these two artists.