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.
Launched in March 2013, ErstAEU is a new imprint from Erstwhile documenting young American post-electroacoustic musicians. This special one-time showcase night features all six artists from the first three releases: Anne Guthrie/Richard Kamerman, Graham Stephenson/Aaron Zarzutzki, and Joe Panzner/Greg Stuart.
A performance of electric guitar and voice by David Grubbs to celebrate the release of The Plain Where the Palace Stood, his first collection of songs since 2008. This concert draws material from the new album as well as from the trio Belfi / Grubbs / Pilia. 75 Dollar Bill (Rick Brown / Che Chen) open.
Yarn/Wire plays premieres two new pieces for percussion and piano quartet by two of NYC's most exciting musicians, composer/multi-instrumentalist Tyondai Braxton and trumpeter/composer Peter Evans. Evans gives solo performance of his signature trumpet improvisations, and Tyondai Braxton + LAAND play a duo set.
HPSCHD, John Cage’s legendary Gesamtkunstwerk is a mass media orgy, considered by many the wildest, largest, and loudest musical composition of the 20th century. Its very nature is inextricable from the tumult of the year it premiered, 1969. With Joel Chadabe, keyboardist Neely Bruce and video directed by Braley Eros.
Paralleling his recent series devoted to the overlap between idea-based art, culture bound illnesses, and conceptual poetics, James Hoff is devoting his residency to exploring the concept of involuntary musical imagery, or earworms. Here he gives a performative lecture on his research and compositional strategies.
To celebrate her recently back in print novels "Speedboat" and "Pitch Dark", author Renata Adler reads from both works followed by a conversation with NYRB Classics editor Edwin Frank. Adler is well known for her tenure at the New Yorker, who recently called the novels "fundamentally probing, even discomfiting, books".
EXTENDED! Saturday from 12-5pm, the subsonic artifacts of Sabisha Friedberg's "Hoffe Axiom" are installed in ISSUE's theater as a quadrophonic installation. Four subwoofers project a series of cyclical sonic traces or phantom sounds in patterns of low-end frequencies.
