In January 2013, ISSUE Project Room began work with architecture firm WORKac to develop the final design plans for the renovation of our historic theater space at 22 Boerum Place in Downtown Brooklyn. This milestone marked the initiation of a long-anticipated process to build a permanent home for experimental music and performance in Downtown Brooklyn, following the completion of our $4.3 million capital campaign in the summer of 2012. Designs for the space will be completed by the end of the year, with construction beginning in Summer 2014.
As part of the design process, ISSUE began working with a structural engineer to further investigate deficiencies in the theater ceiling, which left the space unsafe to occupy after a 50-pound decorative plaster element unexpectedly fell in August 2012. Through this analysis process, we were able to identify all hazardous elements in the structure and remove all unsafe portions of the ceiling through work with contractors in February 2013.
We are very pleased to announce that ISSUE Project Room will now return to its permanent home in Downtown Brooklyn for one full year of programming, to run until our scheduled construction in Summer 2014.
"This Spring really is a bright, new beginning for ISSUE”, says ISSUE’s Board Chair Tom Van Den Bout. “With initiation of serious design work by WorkAC and ARUP, a return to our wonderful space, and a bunch of exciting performances in our 2013 schedule. It's exactly what you'd want to be happening on your 10th Anniversary year."
On March 16th, ISSUE will present the first performance in its newly reclaimed home – a marathon concert of Dennis Johnson's 5-hour minimalist piano work November, performed by R. Andrew Lee. The concert will mark the first performance of this historic work since its premiere in 1959. Credited by some for inspiring La Monte Young's The Well-Tuned Piano, Johnson’s November anticipated many trends in minimalist music in addition to its prodigious duration: diatonic tonality, additive processes, and repetition of small motives.
