Madison Greenstone

Saturday, December 1st, ISSUE is thrilled to present a rare performance from Canadian artist and vocalist Mary Margaret O'Hara, performing in New York for the first time in ten years. O’Hara will give an improvised performance, embedded with songs from her legendary album Miss America, alongside a host of Special Guests, including Peggy Lee, Aidan Closs, Marcus O’Hara and a rare collaboration with Jim White. The evening opens with the ISSUE debut of San Diego-based contra/bass/clarinetist Madison Greenstone, an emerging artist who brings together low clarinets, DIY and kinetic instruments, contained feedback, homemade electronics, and subversive sounding practices.

Madison Greenstone is a contra/bass/clarinetist whose creative practices persistently question the boundaries between composer, performer, improviser and collaborator. Her musical making positions the nature of these less as nominators and more as predicates able to activate each other. These practices are actuated in several performer-composer collectives she is a part of including Shy Bather with Michelle Lou (low clarinets and electronics), Hermetic Art Party with Anthony Vine and Katy Gilmore (electric guitar, live projections, clarinets, tapes, DIY instruments), and we are like flowers with Bryan Jacobs (mechanical clarinets). Madison also collaborates with Celeste Oram within the idiom of experimental lecture recital focusing on reconstructing the performance practices of the anarchist improviser and clarinetist Gustav Renirs, and was a part of the creative team for the evening-length musical theater show, "Tautitotito: An Alternative Genealogy of Aotearoa New Zealand Music" (commissioned by and premiered at the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik 2018). As an improviser, Madison continues to develop an idiosyncratic performing practice with the low clarinets embracing their ability to resonate as polyphonic instruments, create complex beating patterns and emulate feedback.