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.
Tom Thayer performs accompanied by L. GRAY (aka Keith Connolly of NNCK), an exploratory piece for synthesizer, tape, and electronics dedicated to Gary Wright (author of Dream Weaver) and Italian composer Walter Marchetti. Kyle Eyre Clyd performs with theremin, room feedback, wave generators, and mono speakers.
Few bands exude the DIY ethos more than Dead Moon, one of the most revered underground bands of all time. Formidable guitarist, songwriter and all-around grunge-deity J Mascis plays solo. Borbetomagus take free-improv to the extreme in a mass of relentless noise. Improv quartet Das Audit open with heavy instrumentals.
Sabisha Friedberg presents a live mix of the third and final movement of "The Hant Variance" as a multichannel/quadraphonic piece. This finale, the most symphonic in it construction and melancholic in its tonality, is the resolution to the first two movements, released as a 2xLP on ISSUE's Distributed Objects imprint.
For the last 20 years free jazz drummer Paal Nilssen-Love has built a formidable reputation as one of the world’s most energetic and prolific musicians. His 11-piece band Large Unit is Nordic music at its most powerful, veering between sheer force and more subtle and textural passages.
Littoral
Felix Bernstein is skewered, roasted, and bloodied as he launches his debut book, Notes on Post-Conceptual Poetry, into the art and poetry world that it viciously deconstructs. Alex Fleming hosts Cecilia Corrigan, Trisha Low, Merrie Cherry, and Adam Fitzgerald, with music by Cammisa Buerhaus.
David Rosenboom: Propositional Music
David Rosenboom's "How Much Better If Plymouth Rock..." is among the composer's most radical works; a stellar ensemble performs with animation and live, light compositions. "Continental Divide" articulates harmonic resonances emerging as an opening tritone slowly finds its path to resolution.
David Rosenboom: Propositional Music
In "Ringing Minds", David Rosenboom and collaborators extend musical interfacing with human nervous systems, detecting resonances among multiple brains. "Choose Your Universe" is an assemblage in time drawing from several major works, highlighting the vast range of musical types Rosenboom has traversed.
David Rosenboom: Propositional Music
The field of Brain-Computer Interfacing has experienced leaps and bounds in technological progress, enabling the pursuit of applications in music and allied arts that could only be imagined before. David Rosenboom, Tim Mullen and Alex Khalil will demonstrate some of these developments first hand.