ISSUE is pleased to present a conversation and performance from renowned musician and author David Toop alongside free improviser and composer Tania Caroline Chen -- both artists’ debut appearance at ISSUE. The evening celebrates the publication of Toop’s autobiography Flutter Echo: Living Within Sound.
Media
ISSUE has a significant archive of performance documentation that represents both an important link to the past, and a future resource for artists and audiences. ISSUE’s public media archive is a consistently updated and freely accessible collection of video and audio documentation from recent and past ISSUE performances. Currently, ISSUE is in the process of digitizing historical documentation from its former homes at The Old American Can Factory and silo space in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Regular updates feature newly published materials within ISSUE’s constantly expanding performance history.
J D Emmanuel: The Genesis of My Music
Magician of an incredible variety of analog keyboards, J D Emmanuel conceives of sound as an organic, expanding flow of energy and dynamic translation of forces. Emmanuel’s cyclicity of patterns and phrases refers to minimalist traditions, but his music has little in common with something purely mathematical. Using an approach to improvisation influenced by his interests in jazz and the temporal expansion of rock jams, he charges harmony with an intimate spontaneity and freedom without boundaries.
Charmaine Lee: Laminals II With Victoria Shen
Charmaine Lee premieres “Laminals II,” the second of three movements for a new long-form piece for solo voice. With particular attention given to amplification, feedback, and physical technique, this movement further examines the possibilities of augmentation, distortion, and transformation of the human voice. The solo piece is followed by a duo with noise and visual artist Victoria Shen in a collaboration highlighting their individual practices of physicality (of voice, body, and technology) in relation to performance and sound.
Susie Ibarra: Rhythm Cycles (for Drumset)
Susie Ibarra’s “Rhythm Cycles” is a set of pieces that examine rhythm through shifting melody, texture, tempo, polyrhythms, while maintaining cycles. It is both a study and a meditation in rhythm. A virtuosic composer, percussionist and improviser, Ibarra is known for her innovative style and exquisitely global essence, coupling a profound respect for indigenous musics with a unique sense of the avant-garde
Michael Morley: Music For The Never Quartet
ISSUE & Harvestworks present acclaimed musician Michael Morley presenting Music for The Never Quartet, a new piece exploring the sonic possibilities of the acoustic guitar as a pure resonant amplifier of sound.
Jennifer Walshe & Wobbly
ISSUE presents the debut NYC collaborative performance from vocalist and composer Jennifer Walshe and San Francisco-based musician Wobbly (Jon Leidecker). The artists perform works ranging across their shared interest in the idiosyncrasies of digital sound and the outer reaches of online culture.
Okonkwo Weeps In Exile: Nicholas Dawson (Bookworms), Rafael Sanchez, Don McKenzie & Deforrest Brown Jr.
DeForrest Brown Jr. (2017 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow) returns to curate “Okonkwo Weeps In Exile,” a new rhythmic opera featuring producer Nicholas Dawson (Bookworms), drummer Donald Sturge Anthony Mckenzie II, poet and "enlightened educator" Rafael Sanchez, with text from Guerilla essayist and Pan-African Black separatist His Triumphant Blackness: The Negro Subversive.
Sold Out! Henry Flynt: Everlovin' Game On
Philosopher and musician Henry Flynt performs Everlovin’ Game On, an evocation of his best-known work: You Are My Everlovin’. Featuring solo electric violin & pre-recorded tambura, the piece brings together disparate vernaculars: Southern blues, modal jazz, Appalachian fiddle & North Indian raga.
Jack Callahan (Die Reihe): 106 Kerri Chandler Chords
Jack Callahan presents a new iteration of 106 Kerri Chandler Chords for voice and computer, a work derived from his project Housed, an archive of (currently) 850 chords from classic House tracks Callahan collected in 2016, which was released on NNA Tapes and is currently being turned into an online archive. The piece is a primary example of Music Art.
Jeff Witscher: Surviving Sound Music
Jeff Witscher’s Surviving Sound Music is a new work which presents an unhinged narrative using musical elements and spoken texts. Raiding all genres to create sound disorientation and communicate everyday thoughts in tandem with each other, the piece continues Witscher’s identification with radio art -- for its techniques, using music, sound and voice to assert hybrid narrative. This piece also specifically references Witscher’s “Sound Music,” his term for the overlap between electronic composition, computer music and sound art
David Watson & Tony Buck
ISSUE presents guitarist, bagpiper, and organizer David Watson in collaboration with percussionist, improviser, and producer Tony Buck, best known as a member of The Necks and for his far-reaching improvisational collaborations.
Laura Ortman
Multidisciplinary artist and 2010 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Laura Ortman presents new solo work “from the rosined-out beast of her tough-stained violin -- where deranged crumpled wings twirling in starlight and oil slickness and shininess emerge.”