Ryoko Akama

Friday, November 15th, ISSUE is pleased to present FOR, the first evening of FOR/WITH, a mini-festival featuring new commissions and works by iconoclast composers Sarah Hennies, Eva-Maria Houben, Katherine Young, and Ryoko Akama. Now in its third year, the FOR/WITH series celebrates the collaborative process between performer and composer, the spirit of spontaneity in contemporary music, and the ever-present search for the new.

Organized by performer, composer, and 2011 ISSUE Artist-In-Residence Nate Wooley, FOR/WITH simultaneously premieres distinct new compositions for solo trumpet while also embarking on a celebration of the independent work of the series’ commissioned composers. The festival continues to subtly revolve around Wooley’s project to commission artists outside the sphere of “capital T” trumpet repertoire to write solo pieces that feature the trumpet player as a whole, rather than the capabilities of the trumpet as a machine.

The series opens with the world premiere of chanting ballads by Eva-Maria Houben, followed by Katherine Young’s 2015 piece Puddles and Crumbs performed by Weston Olencki. The evening ends with a very special work by London/Tokyo based composer Ryoko Akama commissioned in honor of ISSUE Project Room founder Suzanne Fiol. It will be performed by a group of former ISSUE Artists-in-Residence: Nate Wooley, Lea Bertucci, and Russell Greenberg.

The first evening of FOR/WITH concludes with the world premiere of a new work by Ryoko Akama. One of the younger generation of composers influenced by the wandelweiser group (of which Houben is a major figure), Akama’s work deals with the relationships between performer and space, sound and time, and how the visual becomes the aural.

The 2019 FOR/WITH Festival performances are the closing events of Suzanne Fiol: Ten Years Alive, an exhibition of mixed media work from ISSUE’s late founder Suzanne Fiol. Organized in collaboration with Suzanne’s daughter, Sarah Fiol, the exhibition runs from October 4th until mid November, marking ten years since Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz issued a proclamation officially declaring November 15th “Suzanne Fiol Day in Brooklyn, USA." Suzanne brought artists from a wide array of disciplines together forming new trajectories and models for presenting experimental work, particularly through her commitment to emerging practices highlighted by ISSUE's Artists-in-Residence Program, of which Nate Wooley -- and many of the FOR/WITH 2019 artists -- have participated.

"Suzanne Fiol once told me that I should only make music that scared me. I tried to make that the parameter surrounding my time in residence at ISSUE in 2011; and, since then, I have found the greatest satisfaction in whatever I'm doing when it comes closest to that standard. Suzanne lives in my heart as a great hero and a caring friend; caring not only about me as a human, but about what, why, and how I presented my thoughts and ideas to the world. I know I'm only one person that had this experience with her. There are many others. And, for all of them I celebrate her." — Nate Wooley

Ryoko Akama works with installations and sounds who approaches listening situations that magnify silence, time and space. Her sculptural work engages with mundane objects and invisible energies such as magnetism and gravity, employing small and fragile objects such as paper balloons and glass bottles in order to create tiny aural and visual occurrences that embody ‘almost nothing’ aesthetics. She also composes text scores and performs a diversity of alternative scores in collaboration with other artists and musicians. She runs melange edition, co-curates ame and independent publisher mumei publishing. Selected installations include: the way they are (Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 2019, UK), composition of happiness (Spanien19C, 2019, Denmark), kosetsu (Stedelijk Museum, 2019, Amsterdam), ploughs and harrows (Konfrontation Festival, 2018, Austria), listening with the city (Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, 2018, Germany), odds and ends (Bunkier Sztuki Gallery, 2018, Poland), loiner or (Industrial Museum of Leeds, 2018, UK), Object Migration (Avant Art Festival + Sanatorium Dź wię ku, 2017, Poland) and 1→ 5 (Uppsala Art Museum, 2016, Sweden).