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.
Antenes’ ISSUE residency culminates in the presentation of a time-based “audio museum” reflecting her visits to the NOKIA Bell Labs Archives -- a research process that has run parallel to her practice of appropriating antique or otherwise obsolete objects in ways that reference and extend their original functionality.
December 2nd, Byron Westbrook premieres Interval/Forum. The work completes a series of conceptual environments that collaborate with audience perception and participation, making use of the theatrical setting of Irondale Arts Center to focus the perception of audience presence as a dynamic performance element.
Thursday, November 30th, ISSUE is pleased to premiere Berlin-based composer Bryan Eubanks’ “Object V” and composer and percussionist Sarah Hennies’ “Contralto,” two new works employing unique compositional strategies.
For his third and final project as 2017 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow, DeForrest Brown Jr. presents Xenopoietic Deviations, a radical new lecture-as-performance, composed in segments by theorist Inigo Wilkins and Berlin-based digital artist and producer Lars “TCF” Holdhus.
ISSUE is pleased to present the first-ever duo performance between guitarists Loren Connors and Oren Ambarchi: an occasion intersecting their parallel championing of the instrumental abstraction of the guitar, and their independently meaningful performance histories at ISSUE. The event is free for ISSUE Members.
November 9th, our series observing the work of Alvin Lucier continues. Oren Ambarchi and Gary Schmalzl reprise 2013 piece Criss-Cross. The Ever Present Orchestra perform NY premieres of Two Circles and Double Cross-Hatch. Lucier stages his paradigmatic 1970 work I am sitting in a room.
ISSUE presents the first of two days observing the work of revolutionist composer Alvin Lucier. The Ever Present Orchestra stages two recent Lucier works: Braid and Hanover. Joan La Barbara gives the American premiere of Double Rainbow. Lucier himself performs Bird and Person Dyning.
November 2nd ISSUE presents a program introducing composer Alireza Mashayekhi's unflinching experimentalism to NY audiences with three world premieres, for piano, violin, and prepared tape, performed by Cyrus Forough and Ramin Amir Arjomand. The incomparable Margaret Leng Tan and soprano Daisy Press also perform works.