Joan La Barbara

Thursday, March 14th at 8pm, experimental Nordic artists Avant Joik make their 2024 U.S. debut at ISSUE Project Room. Blending traditional joik language and vocal experimentation using electronic soundscapes, Indigenous Sámi singer Katarina Barruk (vocals/joik) and acclaimed experimentalist Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje (vocals and live electronics) perform with live visuals by Sámi artist Matti Aikio. Renowned vocalist and composer Joan La Barbara will open the evening with Space Testing Re: … / Performance Piece / Erin, a series of vocal explorations that will activate the space at Brooklyn Music School in Fort Greene. 

As a member of Ne(x)tworks, Joan La Barbara was one of the initial ISSUE Project Room Artists-In-Residence in 2006, and has performed extensively throughout the organization’s history while being a current member of ISSUE’s Artistic Advisory Council. Most recently, La Barbara presented a premiere duo with 2023 Artist-In-Residence BINT, as part of ISSUE’s 20th Anniversary Gala. The unique, immersive sonic event was developed from La Barbara’s work Space Testing Re: … in which she “sounds the space” with her voice, exploring the room’s acoustics and natural resonance. La Barbara will present a solo iteration of the piece for this event, segueing into her other works Performance Piece and Erin, parts of which form the foundation of the sound score for the feature film, Arrival.

Joan La Barbara is a composer, performer, sound artist, and actor renowned for her unique vocabulary of experimental and extended vocal techniques, influencing generations of composers and singers. La Barbara's recent work for voice, chamber ensemble and fixed media "Ears of an Eagle; Eyes of a Hawk: In the Vortex" commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, uses as its text the names of women of color who have long been missing from the history of the Suffragist movement and places the audience in the center of a swirling surround soundscape. Exploring ways of immersing the audience in her music, La Barbara seated the American Composers Orchestra around and among the audience in Carnegie Hall’s Zankel auditorium, building her sonic painting “in solitude this fear is lived”, inspired by Agnes Martin’s minimalist drawings. Her works have been performed at Brisbane Biennial, Festival d'Automne à Paris, Warsaw Autumn, MaerzMusik Berlin, and Lincoln Center among many others. Joan received the Foundation for Contemporary Arts John Cage Award, recently released "The Early Immersive Music of Joan La Barbara" (Mode 298) and is on the Performing Arts Faculty at Mannes, the New School.