Vanessa Rossetto: The Dirt

Saturday, May 12th, ISSUE presents composer Vanessa Rossetto and sound artist C. Lavender each presenting new compositions. Respectively, these new works disclose parallel explorations into how trauma and memory collude with audition as a co-composional affective material. Rossetto presents work exploring the localization of transgenerational trauma taking residence in the individual body, while Lavender uses rapidly moving tones produced by specialized software that work with the brain's "frequency following" response as a form of rehabilitation.

Returning to ISSUE after previous performances at ISSUE’s KYE showcase in 2014 and Amplify series with Erstwhile Records in 2015, Vanessa Rossetto premieres “The Dirt,” a new work accompanied by a short film by frequent collaborator Matthew Revert. In a time when many fear that we are collectively hurtling toward a possible violent conflict fomented by jingoistic forces within our own national body, "The Dirt" presents an account of a similar situation long ago but remarkably fresh in the minds of people still living, where the dangers were comparable to those today, but the threat was external rather than internal. An exploration of transgenerational trauma, tenacity, survivorship and memory, the piece uses recordings of the composer's mother, who survived the London Blitz as a child, to interrogate the lingering effects of such upheaval, or any severe upheaval, upon even those who make it through and how this trauma can take up residence in the individual body as anxiety and depression.

For her ISSUE debut as a solo artist, C. Lavender presents “Transmutation Helix,” a performance piece engaging the audience to explore sound at deeply physical and emotional levels as a way to mend their relationship to stress and physical pain. The piece features Lavender employing specialized software to create tones which trigger a “frequency following” response in the brain, subtly modifying brainwave patterns between alert and meditative states. Within this dynamic sonic condition, the audience is given projected cues to explore the sounds they are hearing through gentle movement and breathing guidance.

Vanessa Rossetto is an American composer and painter based in New York City. She uses primarily field recordings, chamber instrumentation, electronics and a wide array of objects to create structures that expose the web of narrative threads underlying the everyday sound world around us. Rossetto has released material via Erstwhile, Kye, Unfathomless, Another Timbre, No Rent and other labels including her own Music Appreciation, and has been featured in publications such as The Wire, Signal to Noise and No Depression.

C. Lavender is a Hudson Valley, New York based sound artist, educator, and healer whose work spans through live performance, recording, installations and workshops. She seeks to create an immersive aural landscape for the listener, an experience which is intensely physical, emotional and ultimately cathartic as noted in a performance review from the Village Voice; "downright iconic, charged with meaning and transgression." C. Lavender has hosted sound-based workshops at The Rubin Museum, MoMA PS1, The Brooklyn Botanic Garden and RPI University. In 2016 she taught a ten-week class for children about the scientific and artistic aspects of sound. C. Lavender's 2017 full length album, “Vanishing Light,” was recorded in a semi-abandoned school turned county mental health center in Hudson, NY.