Past Programs

For three intimate evenings, Philip Glass comes to ISSUE Project Room-- a rare occasion featuring Glass in duo performances with Laurie Anderson, Jon Gibson, and Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields, as well former ISSUE Artists-in Residence Tristan Perich, Nate Wooley, and Ryan Sawyer with Ben Vida.

The fourth annual Darmstadt “Classics of the Avant Garde” Institue celebrates all of June as the ersatz new music history month in New York and draws on a wide variety of experimental approaches from the canon and current practice.

Susan Alcorn is a Baltimore, Maryland-based composer and musician who has received international recognition as an innovator of the pedal steel guitar, an instrument whose sound is commonly associated with country and western music.

Legendary pianist and poet Cecil Taylor is one of the greatest improvisers in the history of modern jazz. Since the first performances of his quartet at the Five Spot Café in 1956, he has unflinchingly and tirelessly worked to define a sound that is still light years ahead of its time.

Right off the bat, from its first outing in February 2010, Unsound Festival New York has established itself with fans and critics as essential New York culture. Unsound Festival New York embraces a range of genres from contemporary classical music to post-industrial sounds to black metal to new directions in bass.

Since 1945, Netherlands-based festival Gaudeamus Muziekweek has presented groundbreaking and challenging new music by emerging composers from around the world. In partnership with Gaudeamus, ISSUE presents, for the first time in the US, a festival highlighting the extraordinary talent that has emerged from Gaudeamus.

ISSUE Project Room is pleased to announce Emerging Artists Commissions for 2012: Michelle Boule, Che Chen, Jen Rosenblit and Jules Gimbrone, Matthew Papich, and Cauleen Smith.

The Darmstadt Essential Repertoire festival highlights cherished works from the experimental music canon. This year's program features Karlheinz Stockhausen, Morton Feldman, and Terry Riely.

Robert Ashley’s Vidas Perfectas, a new Spanish-language production of his ground-breaking opera Perfect Lives (1983), will premiere at Irondale Theater in Brooklyn, directed by Alex Waterman. Starring Ned Sublette, with Elio Villafranca, Elisa Santiago, Abraham Gomez Delgado, and music produced by Peter Gordon.

Everyday Experimental draws its inspiration from commonplace activities and inconsequential sounds of the everyday. With a special focus on the contributions of women to sound art, ISSUE Presents works by Alison Knowles, Moniek Darge, Annea Lockwood, and Olivia Block.

A Gala Honoring William Basinski, featuring an exclusive New York premiere of music from Robert Wilson's "The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic," with William Basinski, and Marina Abramovic.

Through extended engagement with new forms of electronic technology, the works of Oliveros, Radigue and Spiegel exhibit innovative and intuitive processes that rethink concepts of musical perception and redefine the traditionally hierarchical roles of performer/listener, professional/amateur, and musician/non-musician.