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Eric Frye follows his exceptional 2017 ISSUE performance with Obfuscation Morphologies, a work that Fernando Zalamea, professor at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, describes as “an outstanding concrete sheafification of sounds drawing on conceptual motivations coming from Charles Sanders Peirce's studies on nerve excitations."

Adam Tendler presents a selection of unique works chosen especially for ISSUE, performing a repertoire of works from David Lang, Elodie Lauten, Frances White, and Tom Johnson.

Bertucci celebrates the release of Metal Aether, her second album on NNA Tapes (following 2017’s All That Is Solid Melts Into Air), by presenting recent works for alto saxophone and tape that appear on the record, as well as a new composition that is directly informed by the particular acoustic qualities of 22 Boerum Place.

Olivia Block performs a new multiple speaker composition, continuing an ongoing investigation into the properties of wind and its related sounds and symbolic themes. Using a microphone and her breath, small fans, and other small objects on its surface, Block creates aural patterns and “currents” in the room, processing and moving sounds live on her laptop.

ISSUE presents a duo performance between Brandon Lopez and celebrated Detroit-born jazz drummer Gerald Cleaver, a close collaborator of Lopez’s in numerous configurations (including distinct trios with Andria Nicodemou, Nate Wooley, Keir Neuringer, as well as in various large ensemble formats).

Fairer Than Tongue is partly inspired by the grotesquely humorous painting of the beating of Saint Anthony of Padua and its correlation to the imprisonment and torture of the Pedro Albizu Campos (Leader of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Movement) by the US Government. Technically, Lopez employs compositional cells of traditional notation and text to aid in developing and shaping the piece.

Applying various performative strategies on a case-by-case basis, Gabi Losoncy presents a small, unamplified "playing" of something. Losoncy’s recent works include HH (the final release on Graham Lambkin’s KYE imprint), an LP described as “two sides of psychologically dense nothingness,” and Security Besides Love released on Recital, an account voyeuristically documenting the artist’s life, work, and habitats.

ISSUE commemorates the close of the 2017 season with a special year-end event with acclaimed composer and electronic musician Tyondai Braxton and extended technique vocalist, composer, and performer Like A Villain (Holland Andrews), co-presented with BOMB Magazine.

Saturday, December 2nd, Byron Westbrook premieres Interval/Forum, his third and final piece as a 2017 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence. 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 and expand the perception of audience presence as a dynamic performance element.

Alvin Lucier stages his paradigmatic 1970 work I am sitting in a room. The piece consists of several sentences of recorded speech simultaneously played back into a room where they are re-recorded sequentially. As the repetitive sequence continues, those sounds and resonances common to the original spoken statement and those implied by the structural dimensions of the room are reinforced. The others are gradually eliminated.

Alvin Lucier stages his seminal 1976 work Bird and Person Dyning, reprising a performance done at ISSUE in 2013 on a program that included the premiere of December 12th, performed by the Ensemble Pamplemousse. Bird and Person Dyning stands as an essential work demonstrating the composer turning inward to the fundamental sparks of aural phenomena.

In tribute and commemoration of the artistic contributions of Ana-Maria Avram, ISSUE presents a “tombeau” program celebrating late Romanian composer. Bassist and Hyperion Ensemble member Zach Rowden performs a stunning rendition of "Axe VII."

OCCAM IX, the ninth composition in the OCCAM OCEAN composition cycle, was created with Laetitia Sonami on electronics with her new instrument, the Spring Spyre. The work mode is based on an individual “image” illustrated and evoked within each solo -- where each musician is guided by his or her personal “image.”