David Behrman & Carol Robinson: ViewFinder

Saturday, October 4th at 8pm, ISSUE Project Room presents an evening of live performances by David Behrman, Franco-American composer and clarinetist Carol Robinson, and renowned trumpeter Nate Wooley, as part of Celebrating David Behrman—a Fall series honoring the groundbreaking composer and 2025 ISSUE Gala honoree. 

The program features works that highlight Behrman’s legacy of collaboration, technological innovation, and influence across generations of experimental music in both the US and internationally. Recalling earlier ISSUE appearances by all three artists who honored the pioneering French composer Éliane Radigue at the 2017 Gala, the program revisits two key works: a restaging of Behrman’s ViewFinder and Radigue’s OCCAM RIVER III. 

Blending live electronics with acoustic instrumentation, ViewFinder finds Behrman in dialogue with longtime collaborator Robinson on birbynė to conclude the program. Staged at ISSUE in 2017 in recognition of Behrman’s kinship with Radigue, the piece reflects their overlapping explorations of electronic synthesis in the 1970s and the parallel development of experimental music in New York and Paris. 

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.

Working since the 1950s, French composer Éliane Radigue’s profound impact on extended technique and minimalism has developed in parallel to the widely celebrated careers of minimalist composers in New York City. Still, the artistic trajectory of her work remains largely underexposed and her inherent distinctions from the male-dominated classification of minimalism remains underemphasized. With her first compositions presented in the late 1960s, her work was almost exclusively created on a single synthesizer, the ARP 2500 modular system and tape. Since 2005, she has composed mainly for acoustic instruments. Radigue’s enduring artistic history has often intersected with ISSUE. In 2010, she introduced the New York premiere of her 2009 acoustic composition Naldjorlak. She has also presented her masterpiece Songs of Milarepa, as well the U.S. and World premieres of OCCAM XVI, OCCAM X and OCCAM RIVER III, which were performed by Carol Robinson and Nate Wooley at ISSUE Project Room in 2014. In honor of her contributions to electronic music and sound art, Radigue was also awarded Prix Ars Electronica’s Golden Nica in Austria in 2006, as well as the Grand Prize for her oeuvre from the SACEM, the Giga-Hertz Prize from the ZKM in Germany, and the Open Oor composition prize in the Netherlands.

To say that Carol Robinson is a Franco-American composer and clarinetist is perhaps too restrictive to describe the eclecticism of her experience and passion. Whether performing repertoire or experimental forms, she appears in major venues and festivals the world over (MaerzMuzik, Festival d’Automne, Archipel, RomaEuropa, Wien Modern, CTM Berlin, Geometry of Now, Crossing the Line, Angelica, Huddersfield…), working with musicians from a wide stylistic spectrum. Author of over one hundred works, recent compositions include commissions from the French Ministry of Culture (Blanc de Neige - sax, electric guitar, double bass and electronics, or Can You See - choir, mandolin, guitar, harp), the Donaueschinger Musiktage (Occam Ocean Cinquanta - orchestra) - co-composed with Éliane Radigue, and the Brucknerhaus Linz (Under the Bridge are Rapids that Bend - harp, viola). Fascinated by electronic sound manipulation, she often expands acoustic instruments with electronics. Three of these compositions, Nacarat (electric guitar), Black on Green (double bass), and Les si doux redoux (basset horn), were released on MODE RECORDS. Beyond her own compositions, her discography includes award winning monographic recordings of music by Scelsi, Nono, Feldman, Berio, Radigue, Frey or Niblock, as well as classical music, jazz and alternative rock.