Formed in NYC in 1993, the improvising collective No-Neck Blues Band (NNCK) favors anonymity, autonomy, and obfuscation. Alongside founding member Keith Connolly (2016 AIR), they return to open ISSUE’s Fall season at First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn.
ISSUE presents the first commission from Eden Girma (2026 AIR). Part dreamscape and part summoning circle, an intimate diasporic familial archive is pieced together through the eyes of a five-year-old child.
In partnership with Franklin Furnace as part of their 50th anniversary commemoration and November release of "Back to the Present: 50 Years of Free Expression with Franklin Furnace" ISSUE presents an evening of performance and conversation.
Incorporating elements of noise, trance and minimalism, Sergei Tcherepnin (2012 AIR) presents new work for Serge Modular synthesizer.
ISSUE presents composers Lainie Fefferman & Seth Cluett premiering new works developed in collaboration with Nokia Bell Labs, evoking a profound history of collaboration and shared dialogue between artists & engineers.
ISSUE is thrilled to present a rare performance from Canadian artist and vocalist Mary Margaret O'Hara, performing in NY for the first time in ten years. O’Hara will give an improvised performance, embedded with songs from her legendary album Miss America, alongside special guests.
Artists-In-Residence 2018
Julia Santoli presents the third and final work of her 2018 ISSUE residency with the premiere of a new work within her “Siren Sore” cycle: a mutant project of myriad form manifesting as visual project, recording album, and live performance through genre-crossing collaborations.
For their final program as the 2018 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow, Queer Trash is excited to present God Is My Co-Pilot and Fire-Toolz. Angular and ecstatic, the program promises an evening of raw and experimental song form, reconstructed noise, and genre promiscuity.
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 final research showing, Rawls speculates upon the cursor as a kind of body, describing the ephemeral unit as “an abstract protagonist, a messenger in crisis.”
The second evening of the series opens with the world premiere of Becoming Air by Annea Lockwood, followed by Library on Lightning by Ashley Fure, Felipe Lara’s recent composition Metafagote, and the premiere of the duo rendition of Wadada Leo Smith’s Red Autumn Gold.
ISSUE is pleased to present FOR, the first evening of FOR/WITH, a mini-festival featuring new commissions and works by iconoclast composers Wadada Leo Smith, Annea Lockwood, and Catherine Lamb. Now in its second year, the FOR/WITH series celebrates the collaborative process between performer and composer.
Artists-In-Residence 2018
Improviser, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Brandon Lopez presents Malediction, his third and final piece as a 2018 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence, for four players (Michael Foster on Saxophones, Nina Dante voice, Lucie Vítková on accordian and objects, and Lopez himself).