David Behrman & Ben Neill: Pushback Against Tough Situations

Friday, October 3rd at 8pm, ISSUE Project Room presents an evening of live performances by David Behrman & Ben Neill, plus John King, Aliya Ultan & Moira Zhang as part of Celebrating David Behrman—a Fall series honoring the groundbreaking composer and 2025 ISSUE Gala honoree. The program reflects the continued relevance, adaptability, and intergenerational resonance of Behrman’s work, performed by a dynamic group of collaborators both past and present.

The evening features a performance of Pushback Against Tough Situations, a layered, multimedia composition created by Behrman (electronics) in collaboration with Ben Neill (Mutantrumpet). The piece—evolving since 1999 including artists Joan La Barbara, Eric Barsness, Thomas Buckner, Maria Ludovici, Hans Tammen and Peter Zummo—juxtaposes real-time instrumental performance with historic recorded material. For Neill, this performance also marks a full-circle moment in artistic lineage. “Shortly after I moved to New York in 1984,” Neill recalls, “I began working with David Behrman on a series of pieces for his interactive electronics system. This was an extremely influential part of my development as a composer and performer.” Behrman’s pioneering approach—activating generative electronic systems in response to acoustic instruments—sparked Neill’s own pursuit of hybrid performance systems. This would ultimately lead to his creation of the Mutantrumpet, a custom-designed electroacoustic instrument that combines extended trumpet techniques with computer interactivity and sound processing. 

In Pushback Against Tough Situations Behrman’s politically attuned sensibility meets Neill’s hybrid performance approach. The four-part work weaves together archival broadcasts, wartime letters, and anti-war texts, including a 2004 WBAI radio segment advising protestors during the Republican National Convention, 1939 letters between S. N. Behrman and Siegfried Sassoon on the brink of WWII, and Sassoon’s 1917 public refusal to fight in World War I. As Behrman and Neill perform live, these fragments echo against one another—activating memory, protest, and possibility.

David Behrman is a composer and artist active since the 1960s. Over the years he has made sound and multimedia installations for gallery spaces as well as musical compositions for performance in concerts. Most of his pieces feature flexible structures and the use of technology in personal ways; compositions rely on interactive real-time relationships with imaginative performers. Together with Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma, Behrman founded the Sonic Arts Union in 1966. He had a long association with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as composer and performer, created music for several of the Company’s repertory pieces, and was a member of the Company’s Music Committee during its last years. Pictures, with its music Interspecies Smalltalk, won the Olivier Award in 1985. It remained in the Merce Cunningham Dance Company repertory from 1984 to 1989, and was revived in 2002. Behrman has received grants from the NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, the Japan-United States Friendship Commission, the D.A.A.D., the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Henry Cowell Foundation. He was a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in 2016. Audio recordings of his works are on the XI, Lovely Music, Pogus, New World, WERGO, Black Truffle Records and Alga Marghen labels.

Composer/performer Ben Neill is the inventor of the Mutantrumpet, a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument, and is recognized as a musical innovator who “uses a schizophrenic trumpet to create art music for the people” (Wired Magazine). His discography includes fourteen albums on labels including Verve, Astralwerks, Thirsty Ear, and Six Degrees. He has performed worldwide at venues including BAM Next Wave Festival, Lincoln Center, Big Ears Festival, Whitney Museum, Broad Museum, Moogfest, Age of Reflections, Bing Concert Hall at Stanford, Getty Museum, Spoleto Festival, Umbria Jazz, ICA London, Istanbul Jazz Festival, Vienna Jazz Festival, and Edinburgh Festival. He has received commissions from the MAP Fund, NYSCA, and New Music USA. His first book, Diffusing Music; Trajectories of Sonic Democratization, was published by Bloomsbury Academic Press in 2024. Neill is a longtime close associate of La Monte Young, performing with Young and leading international concerts of his music since the mid-1980’s. He has also worked with John Cale, King Britt, Rhys Chatham, Nicolas Collins, Petr Kotik, Pauline Oliveros, DJ Spooky, and Mimi Goese. His numerous collaborations with visual artists include ITSOFOMO, a large-scale multimedia piece created with the late David Wojnarowicz.