C. Spencer Yeh & Kwami Winfield

Thursday, January 26th, 8pm ET, ISSUE opens its 2023 season with an expansive gathering of improvising musicians with idiomatic approaches traversing guitar, percussion, voice, violin, trumpet, electronics, and more. Featuring an intersecting cohort across experimental improvisation, the evening welcomes back Bhutanese guitarist and improviser Tashi Dorji collaborating with multiinstrumentalist Alex Zhang Hungtai, the recent duo between artist, improviser, and composer C. Spencer Yeh and musician Kwami Winfield, and a solo performance from performer, composer and sound designer Ka Baird.

Tashi Dorji’s own skewering of guitar traditions has developed an idiosyncratic take on the instrument, one defined by movement and profound openness to technique. Although much has been said about his parallelisms with the stark improvisational world of Derek Bailey and meditative energy of Ben Chasny, Dorji has reached the point where his hybrid style has evolved into a new form altogether. Dorji returns after performances alongside Bill Orcutt and Joe McPhee at ISSUE in 2018. Recently, Dorji has collaborated alongside Alex Zhang Hungtai at events at Tubby’s in Kingston, New York and the Catalytic Sound Festival in Asheville, North Carolina. Zhang, having retired his project Dirty Beaches (which focused on a highly stylized approach to the yearning croons of rockabilly), has focused on an improvisational language that combines saxophone, synthesizers, percussion, piano, contact mic feedback drone, cymbal saw, and more.

Kwami Winfield and C. Spencer Yeh have been working as a duo since late 2019, with the pairing initially proposed by their mutual friend Jessica Hallock, of NYC-NOISE. Upon the first meeting, there was an immediate mutual decision to pursue and develop the duo as an established unit. Currently incorporating trumpet, violin, voice, electronics, percussion, objects, and more—the duo has focused on taking a dynamic “deep dive” into improvisational collaboration, taking it beyond the conceptual and instrumental associations of their respective practices.

Ka Baird’s recent solo performances can be described as dancing somewhere in the undefined margins of experimental sound, performance art, and humor. Exploring extended voice and microphone techniques along with flute, electronic music and their rigorous physicality, Baird’s recent solo practice has evolved into a style all their own.

Tashi Dorji is a Bhutanese guitarist and improviser based in Asheville NC. Tashi has released music both as a soloist and as a collaborator, notably with Mette Rasmussen, Aaron Turner (Sumac, Mamiffer), Che Chen (75 Dollar Bill), Aki Onda, Michael Zerang, John Deiterich (Deerhoof), C Spencer Yeh, Dave Rempis, Patrick Shiroishi, KUZU ( w/ Dave Rempis & Tyler Damon), MANAS (w/ Thom Nguyen), Patrick Shiroishi, Dylan Fujioka on labels like Moone Records, Gilgonko Records, Bathetic Records, Trost, Feeding Tubes, UNROCK, VDSQ, MIE, Aerophonic Records, Family Vineyard, Astral Spirits. Tashi is currently on Drag City records.

After retiring his project Dirty Beaches, Alex Zhang Hungtai has been focusing on explorations of improvised music, Free Jazz, film scores and compositions. Zhang predominantly works with saxophone, synthesizers, percussion and piano, furthering his research on ritualistic music of liminality and its correlation with the unconscious mind.

C. Spencer Yeh is recognized for interdisciplinary activities as an artist, improviser, and composer, as well as for his music project Burning Star Core. This past year Yeh has broadcasted live for The Kitchen NYC, ESS Chicago IL with both The Renaissance Society and Vox Effusis (organized by Lou Mallozzi), Casa del Lago UNAM MX (with Jacob Wick and Bonnie Jones), and both solo and in Luke Stewart/Leila Bordreuil’s Feedback Ensemble for Roulette NYC. Additionally, Yeh premiered new video works with ISSUE Project Room NYC, and the Bemis Center Omaha NE, and exhibited with Loong Mah NYC, Carriage Trade NYC, 5th Floor/Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, and Bánh Mì Verlag. In 2019, Yeh received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award.

Kwami Winfield is a musician from Jersey City, NJ ,based in Brooklyn, NY. She plays trumpet.

Ka Baird is a performer, composer and sound designer based in New York City. They are known for their live performances which include extended voice and microphone techniques combined with electronics and psychoacoustic interplay of flutes and other woodwinds. They create a present tense sound with a vigorous, ritualistic delivery that seeks extreme release through physical exertion and psychic extension. They work with many other musicians and artists, both in structured compositions and in their dedicated practice of improvisation. They are one of the founding members of Spires That In The Sunset Rise founded in Chicago in 2001. Their debut solo album "Sapropelic Pycnic" was released through independent Chicago label Drag City in 2017. Their latest recording "Respires" was released through Brooklyn based imprint RVNG Intl in October 2019. Recent national and international engagements have included performances at Unsound Festival (Krakow), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), MoMA PS1 (NYC), Issue Project Room (NYC), The Kitchen (NYC), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), TUSK Festival (Newcastle, UK), Incubate (Tilburg, Netherlands), KRAAK (Brussels, Belgium), Le Guess Who (Utrecht, Netherlands), and the Festival Of Endless Gratitude (Copenhagen,DK). They have done residencies at Sonoscopia (Porto), Inkonst (Malmo), Experimental Sound Studio (Chicago), and Pioneer Works (Brooklyn). They were a 2020 recipient of the Foundation of Contemporary Art's Emergency Grant as well as a Jerome Foundation Artist-in-Residence at Roulette Intermedium in 2019.