Closing the Can Factory, Opening 110 Livingston
We’ve posted some photos from last week’s final concert in the Old American Can Factory, featuring Talibam!, Jonathan Kane’s February, and Tony Conrad & MV Carbon. It was a surreal experience, with giant eyeball projections, minimalist blues, no-school rap, and an hour-long drone set (by which time most of us were sitting on the floor) to close out an amazing four years in our beloved Gowanus Can Factory.
But we’re looking ahead: this week, we’ve brought one of the top international contemporary music festivals to New York for the first time, in Gaudeamus Muziekweek New York. These artists straddle electronic, chamber, orchestral, and conceptual music with pieces involving everything from 100 metronomes (Gyorgy Ligeti’s “Poème Symphonique,” performed by Iktus Percussion) to Yannis Kyriakides’s audiovisual compositions, juxtaposing projections of text with music performed by his own Ensemble MAE with the International Contemporary Ensemble.
There’s still time left to become a member and receive two free tickets to any Gaudeamus Muziekweek New York concert, in addition to the usual two free tickets, discounts, and other thank-you gifts we’re offering toward membership. So don’t delay – check out the great benefits of a membership to ISSUE Project Room.
Photos from the final Can Factory concert are after the jump!
Gaudeamus Muziekweek New York: Jan. 25 – 28, 2012
Gyorgy Ligeti preparing “Poème Symphonique” (Tjerk van der Meulen, Rotterdam)ISSUE Project Room
110 Livingston Street,
Downtown Brooklyn
Doors open at 7:30;
performances begin at 8pm
Wednesday, Jan. 25 at 8 pm
Thursday, Jan. 26 at 8 pm
Friday, Jan. 27 at 8 pm
Saturday, Jan. 28 at 8 pm
Since 1945, the Netherlands-based contemporary music festival Gaudeamus Muziekweek has presented groundbreaking and challenging new music by emerging composers from around the world. Working in partnership with Gaudeamus, ISSUE Project Room will present, for the first time in the United States, a festival highlighting some of the extraordinary talent that has emerged from the Gaudeamus Muziekweek.
Gaudeamus Muziekweek New York will mark ISSUE Project Room’s move to its new home at 110 Livingston Street in Downtown Brooklyn, where it has won a 20-year, rent-free lease and where, beginning in late January, it will present all of its programming. One of New York’s foremost commissioners and presenters of experimental art and performance, ISSUE has grown rapidly since its 2003 founding. In the process, it has contributed to the development of the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, where it is currently located, and, previously, Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It will now play a vital role in the development of rapidly growing Downtown Brooklyn.
ISSUE Project Room’s gorgeous jewel-box theater at 110 Livingston—originally designed by McKim, Mead, and White and built in the 1920s—will become the only European-style chamber hall open to the public in New York, and one of only a few in the United States. ISSUE Project Room Executive Director Ed Patuto says, “The ability to present works in an authentic hall with acoustics that complement the performance will be an unprecedented asset for New York’s experimental and broader cultural communities.”
Like ISSUE, Gaudeamus serves as a catalyst and incubator for the development of trends in contemporary music. The festival has nurtured and supported the work of composers ranging from Louis Andriessen, Gyorgy Ligeti and Pauline Oliveros to Yannis Kyriakides, Richard Barrett and Ted Hearne.
Mixing performances by Dutch and American ensembles, Gaudeamus Muziekweek New York will feature the U.S. premiere of 2011 Gaudeamus Prize-winner Yoshi Onishi’s “Départ dans…” performed by Wet Ink Ensemble, plus performances by International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Iktus Percussion, and the Netherlands-based ensemble MAE. Programs include a portrait of Amsterdam-based composer Yannis Kyriakides, an evening of electronic music featuring Wouter Snoei, Matthew Ostrowski, and Philip White & Ted Hearne; a rare performance of Gyorgi Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique for 100 metronomes; and performances by the CUNY New Music Ensemble.
ISSUE’s 2012 Emerging Artists Commissions
ISSUE Project Room’s 2012 Emerging Artists Commissions will focus on transdisciplinary practices with a special attention to contemporary political, aesthetic and social concerns. This year we attempted to reach outside our normal range of focus to include a wider variety of artists working across different media. ISSUE’s curators Lawrence Kumpf and Zach Layton worked with panelists Matthew Walker, James Hoff, Howie Chen and Ulrike Muller to select this year’s commissions. We are very much looking forward to working with the applicants in the upcoming year.
ISSUE Project Room’s Emerging Artists Commission program is made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Wall Street Journal: A New ISSUE Arises
RAISING A NEW ISSUE IN DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN
Published in the Wall St. Journal on December 21, 2011
By STEVE DOLLAR
Four years after winning a rent-free, 20-year lease on its new home, Issue Project Room is finally taking up full residence at 110 Livingston St. in downtown Brooklyn.
“The space is really unique for the city,” said Ed Patuto, the executive director of the nonprofit arts presenter, which makes its big move on Jan. 25. The inaugural event will be the first American staging of the Dutch new-music festival Gaudeamus Muziekweek.
The Livingston Street site, which resides on the ground floor of a stunning Beaux Arts-style building designed in 1926 by the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, has been the focus of a $3.7 million fund-raising campaign, boosted in 2009 by a $1.1 million grant from Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz.
Along with more conventional renovations, that sum was necessary for an overhaul of the space’s raw, intensely reverberant interior—which includes a dramatic, 40-foot-high vaulted ceiling—not only to enhance listening quality, but to protect neighbors living on the floors above in what are now condominiums developed by Two Trees Management Company. (The firm purchased the former Board of Education site from the city in 2003 for more than $45 million.)
“New York doesn’t have a European-style chamber-music hall,” said Mr. Patuto, who this year secured another $1.1 million in funding from civic sources to reach the $2.3 million mark—sufficient to proceed with plans to occupy the organization’s new home. “And it doesn’t have a space that is that flexible in terms of how it can
transform. We’ll have everything from black-box capability to a complete white box: We can put visuals anywhere around the room for a completely immersive environment.”
Mr. Patuto took over at Issue Project Room in November 2010—a year after the death of its founder, Suzanne Fiol—and has devoted much of his energy to the transition. With more than 200 performances and 30 commissions in 2011 (much of them focused on avant-garde music and mixed-media work of both local and international significance), the current venue at the Old American Can Factory in Gowanus was bustling.
But the downtown space, in the epicenter of the growing Brooklyn arts corridor—which includes the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Mark Morris Dance Center and Roulette, among others—offers a richer spectrum of possibilities.
“The room is really live and has a beautiful, sweet sound,” said Mr. Patuto, who has already overseen a series of special concerts there. Beyond what such acoustics can do for a string quartet, they open all sorts of creative opportunities for experimental artists. This year, in one particularly memorable example, the composer Ellen Fullman ran 50-foot wires across the room. “It became a resonating box,” Mr. Patuto said.
Throughout its new season, the venue will test which kinds of acoustic treatments suit it best. The plan calls for the use of about 50 acoustic panels to deaden specific parts of the space, which features “marble floors, marble columns and brass doors,” Mr. Patuto noted. The organization arrived at a modular approach to design for the space, working with architects Dan Wood and Amale Andraos of WORK AC and acousticians from Arup. It will allow for traditional seated presentations and more ambient events, including performances using a unique 16-speaker array currently installed at the Can Factory.
“There will be no fixed stage, no fixed seating,” Mr. Patuto said. “The experience of coming to Issue Project Room will be as unpredictable as the performances themselves.” …
Of course, Issue Project Room hasn’t quit the Can Factory quite yet. January will offer a closing slate of performances, including a farewell party on Jan. 20 with headliners Jonathan Kane and his minimalist blues band, February.
“Issue’s almost our home base,” said Mr. Kane, who will be celebrating the release of an album recorded live at the venue in 2010 as part of a festival for the experimental music label Table of the Elements. The album also marks the first project to be released on Issue Project Room’s own in-house label, which will document performances fostered by the organization.
He added, “It’s maybe what the Southside clubs were to Muddy Waters or what CBGB was to the Ramones. People dance a lot and there’s a lot of audience enthusiasm.”
ALEX WATERMAN with Timothy Nassau (from the Brooklyn Rail)
Vidas Perfectas, a new Spanish-language production of Perfect Lives, Robert Ashley’s visionary television opera from 1983, will premiere December 15 through 17 at Brooklyn’s Irondale Theater, with performances of the first three episodes of seven. It will take three years to complete the adaptation, which will travel to Ballroom Marfa in Texas, where the next two episodes will be performed and filming for tv will begin. From there, its future is uncertain. Timothy Nassau discussed Vidas Perfectas via e-mail with its director, composer, and musicologist Alex Waterman.
Timothy Nassau (Rail): How did Vidas Perfectas come into being?
Alex Waterman: Zach Layton, Robert Ashley, and I applied for a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 2009 to present a performance version of Perfect Lives as part of the Essential Repertoire series that Layton produces. When we applied we had it in our minds that we would just perform the music in a chamber music setting with either Robert Ashley reading, or one of his band members.
read the whole interview at brooklynrail.org
Darmstadt: Essential Repertoire – Stockhausen’s “Cosmic Pulses,” Feldman’s “For Christian Wolff,” and Terry Riley’s “In C”
New York Premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Cosmic Pulses // Morton Feldman’s marathon For Christian Wolff // Darmstadt’s celebrated Terry Riley’s In C
Darmstadt “Classics of the Avant Garde” presents its fourth annual Essential Repertoire festival at ISSUE Project Room. Described as “a conscious provocation on multiple levels” by the New York Times, and “one of the most significant presentations of the season” by Time Out New York, this “open-minded and inclusive” festival encompasses everything from Darmstadt Summer Course for New Music figurehead Karlheinz Stockhausen to godfather of the New York School, Morton Feldman to proto-minimalism pioneer Terry Riley.
The festival starts with a marathon reading of Morton Feldman’s For Christian Wolff. Generally regarded as the most austere of Feldman’s late works, Ensemble Sospeso will perform this three-hour duet for flute and piano. On Friday, Analog Arts will give the New York premiere of Cosmic Pulses, the last piece of electronic music written by Karlheinz Stockhausen. With 8 channels of “sound projection” surrounding the audience, Cosmic Pulses is a sonic behemoth, and will be complemented by other Stockhausen works, Telemusik and Trompete. The festival will conclude with Darmstadt’s celebrated annual performance of Terry Riley’s 1964 Minimalist classic, In C, anchored—due to popular demand—by noted La Monte Young collaborator and former Swans drummer Jonathan Kane, who made his debut with the ensemble last year. This electrifying yearly new music jam session, called “the most vital, audacious and energizing performance of the score,” by the New York Times in 2007, has never before taken place at Issue Project Room.
Thursday, December 8 at 8 p.m.
Morton Feldman
For Christian Wolff (1986)
Ensemble Sospeso: Nicholas DeMaison (keyboards), Amelia Lukas (flute)
An “extended waking dream,” written and premiered in 1986, For Christian Wolff is scored for keyboards and flute, played here by Ensemble Sospeso’s Nicholas DeMaison and flutist Amelia Lukas. Generally regarded as the most austere of Feldman’s late works, For Christian Wolff is described by DeMaison as “fantastically quiet, full of pitches and yet somehow never quite emerging from a perpetual state of almost-being.” Since its Carnegie Hall debut in 1998, Ensemble Sospeso’s performances have been described as “stunning” (The New York Times), “a wonder to watch” (The Wall Street Journal) and “gorgeously rich” (The Village Voice).
Friday, December 9 at 8 p.m.
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Cosmic Pulses (2007), Telemusik (1966), Trumpet from Orchestra Finalists (1996)
Analog Arts: Joe Drew (trumpet and sound projection)
Joe Drew, of Analog Arts, will give the New York premiere of Cosmic Pulses, the last piece of electronic music Karlheinz Stockhausen wrote. With an 8-channel sound system surrounding the audience (and a subwoofer on every channel), Cosmic Pulses envelops the audience in a swirl of sound. Cosmic Pulses will be paired with Stockhausen’s early electronic masterpiece, Telemusik (1966) and an excerpt from Orchestra Finalists (1996), the second scene of Wednesday from the Licht cycle.
Saturday, December 10 at 8 p.m.
Terry Riley
In C (1964)
Darmstadt: Essential Repertoire closes with the seventh annual performance of Terry Riley’s minimalist classic, and instigator of a musical movement, “In C.” The piece will be performed in true Darmstadt fashion, by an intergenerational ensemble of New York experimental musicians, amplified and backed by former Swans drummer and La Monte Young collaborator Jonathan Kane. The annual electrifying new music jam session, called “the most vital, audacious and energizing performance” of the piece by the New York Times, has never before taken place at Issue Project Room.
Darmstadt “Classics of the Avant Garde” is the Brooklyn-based music series led by composer-musicians Zach Layton and Nick Hallett, focusing on the experimental tradition. Darmstadt is sponsored by ISSUE Project Room, and presents its two annual programs: a month-long Institute of premieres, workshops, video screenings, and lecture-performances in June and an Essential Repertoire festival of cherished works from the experimental music canon in the Fall.
Darmstadt: Essential Repertoire 2011
December 8-10 at ISSUE Project Room in the OA Can Factory
232 3rd Street, 3rd Floor Brooklyn, NY 11215
Doors for all concerts open at 8 pm. Music begins at 8:30 pm.
Tickets $10/$8 ISSUE Project Room members
ABOUT ISSUE PROJECT ROOM
ISSUE Project Room, a registered 501(c)(3) organization, was established in 2003 by visionary artist Suzanne Fiol, and is a vibrant nexus for cutting-edge, multi-disciplinary arts in Brooklyn. ISSUE supports emerging and established experimental artists through more than 200 programs each year including music concerts, literary readings, films, videos, dance, visual and sound art, new media, critical theory lectures and discussions, site-specific work, commissions, educational workshops, master classes, and genre-defying interdisciplinary performances that challenge and expand conventional practices in art.
Support for ISSUE has been provided by CHORA, a project of the Metabolic Studio, a direct charitable activity of the Annenberg Foundation led by Artist and Foundation Director Lauren Bon. CHORA aims to support the intangibles that precede creativity.
2012: The Exciting Year Ahead
Dear Friends,
Thank you for so much for all of your support this year. 2012 is going to be the most exciting and pivotal year yet for our organization, and I want to ask you to consider making a tax-deductible year-end gift of $50, $100, or $250 to support our ninth year of presenting groundbreaking new work.
In 2011, donations from our community helped support more than 135 performances, including the commission and presentation of 30 new works by innovative artists from New York and around the world. The Wall Street Journal hailed these efforts, deeming us “Brooklyn’s leading avantgarde presenter.”
2012 will be a milestone in our history. We are thrilled that, beginning in March, all performances and events will take place at 110 Livingston St. in Downtown Brooklyn—New York’s new home for experimental music and arts. Our move to 110 will allow artists’ use of the space to inform the architectural design process for renovations of the theater.
In the coming year, your support will enable:
• 100+ pre-renovation performances at 110 Livingston
• 24 commissions of new work
• 4 year-long artist residencies by Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, Aki Onda, Sergei Tcherepnin and Yarn/Wire
• Temporary acoustic treatment of 110 Livingston, to enable expanded pre-construction use
• A new NYU-Brooklyn Poly Lab, where students will collaborate with artists to create open-source
software that will be made available to artists in our community.
Please join us in celebrating the arts and the exciting year ahead by making a fully tax-deductible donation. Your participation continues to be absolutely vital to our success as we work to raise $25,000 by December 31 to support 2012 programs.
Thank you, again, for all of your support. We look forward to sharing with you another year of artistic invention in our new performance space!
With all my best wishes,
Ed Patuto
Executive Director
P.S. Make your gift by December 31, 2011 and receive 2 free tickets to a concert in our first month at 110 Livingston. Make a gift online, call us at 718-330-0313 x5 or mail a check payable to “ISSUE Project Room” to 232 3rd Street, 3rd Fl, Brooklyn, NY 11215. Attn: Year-End Campaign.
Dec. 15 – 17 at Irondale Brooklyn: Robert Ashley’s “Vidas Perfectas”
A new Spanish-language version of “Perfect Lives”
December 15 – 17 at Irondale Theater in Brooklyn, 8pm
Presented by ISSUE Project Room, Irondale Theater, and Ballroom Marfa
Buy Tickets | $25 / $20 for members
Trailer by Alex Waterman & Eve Essex
Everyday Experimental: November 17 – 19, 2011
Annea Lockwood, Piano Burning. Photo by Geoff Adams.
Robert Ashley: “The music has outgrown the architecture.”
On Oct. 23, Issue Project Room held a screening of Robert Ashley’s 1983 classic made-for-TV-opera “Perfect Lives,” in support of our ongoing fundraising campaign for “Vidas Perfectas,” to be held December 15 – 17 at Irondale Theater in Brooklyn.
After the screening, Robert Ashley, Alex Waterman and Ned Sublette (who will play the narrator, “R,” in “Vidas Perfectas”) stuck around for a Q&A about television, “Vidas Perfectas,” and methods of collaboration. The whole interview is available for streaming below, but here’s an excerpt, just to whet your appetite
(Listen while reading)
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Why is it for television? As I was growing into music, I was more and more disappointed by the musical experience that I saw on stage. One, because it was so old—the instruments are old, the ideas are so old, everything’s so old it’s so boring, you know? Because the music that we’re all thinking of had outgrown the architecture. In the best of circumstances, the architecture and the music—for the people—match. But what’s happened in the last 50–100 years is that the music has outgrown the architecture. There is no architecture to deal with what we’re talking about right here [bong] … and I thought, there’s got to be one, or we wouldn’t be thinking these thoughts. And it occurred to me … that our architecture might be the imaginary space behind the surface of the television screen. In other words, you look at the television screen, you see whatever you see—red, green, blue—behind that there’s an imaginary space and maybe that’s the place for the music of our time. So I started thinking in that way and I haven’t changed my mind a bit. I think Alex is the first to see … if you want your music to feel at home, I would suggest you start knocking on the doors of television and saying “let me in.” Because that’s the space for my music. It has everything in terms of the speed of the music, it can handle any situation, and it can go from not much money to a whole lot of money—and you want to be on both ends [bong].
—Robert Ashley
Full Excerpt:
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Wouter Vanhaelemeesch – “The Hypnotic Defense”
The cover for “All Things are From Him, Through Him and In Him,” by Brethren of the Free Spirit. Artwork by Wouter Vanhaelemeesch.
“The Hypnotic Defense” is a show by Belgian artist Wouter Vanhaelemeesch, who has contributed art to albums by Jozef van Wissem, as well as LP covers for people like Robbie Basho, Jack Rose, Graveyards, Cian Nugent, and Second Family Band. His work – which seems related to Baroque engravings as van Wissem’s lute playing relates to Baroque lute performance practice – will be shown at 110 Livingston during Jozef van Wissem’s two-night residency, “New Music for Early Instruments” [10/13, 10/14].
ARCADIA Gala honoring William Basinski and featuring music from Robert Wilson’s “The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic”
A Gala Honoring William BasinskiRobert Wilson’s “The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic,”
with William Basinski, Antony, and Marina Abramovic.
ISSUE Project Room Benefit Art Auction at Industria Superstudio
ISSUE Project Room art auction looks to raise $100,000 to support new work by hundreds of NYC artists
Bid online or on-site on artworks by ANDY WARHOL, YOKO ONO, MARINA ZURKOW, CINDY SHERMAN, STEPHEN VITIELLO, JAMES FRANCO, JO ANDRES AND MORE
Performances by A^CTION (Kim Gordon, Tony Conrad, John Miller), and Steve Roden
Buy Tickets // View and Bid Online
On October 1, 2011, ISSUE Project Room will host its second benefit art auction featuring more than 50 works representing and extraordinary range of celebrated artists in the ISSUE Project Room community. Auction items include photographs, paintings, and works on paper donated by local and national galleries and artists. Proceeds will benefit the organization’s year-round programming, residencies, emerging artist commissions, and workshops.
Artists include: Vito Acconci, Peggy Ahwesh, Jo Andres, Paolo Arao, Kenseth Armstead, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Donald Baechler, Paul Chan, Tony Conrad, Ethan Cook, Matthew Craven, Peggy Cyphers, E.V. Day, Devon Dikeou, Daniella Dooling, Shawn Dulaney, Devin Elijah, Rochelle Feinstein, Suzanne Fiol, Neal Franc, Isa Freeling, Michelle Handelman, Joseph Holmes, Mi Ju, Faten Kanaan, Art Kane, Robin Khan, Todd Knopke, Jutta Koether, Lauren Luloff, Christian Marclay, John Miller, Paul Miller (DJ Spooky), Stephen Moore, Sophie Morner, Ulrike Muller, James Nares, Yoko Ono, Tony Oursler, Carissa Pelleteri, Tristan Perich, Barbara Pollack, Brett Reichman, Steve Roden, Julia Rommel, Kevin Ryan, Cindy Sherman, James Siena, Gary Simmons, Jude Tallichet, Mickalene Thomas, Agnes Thor, iO Tillett Wright, Stephen Vitiello, Andy Warhol, Martynka Wawrzyniak, John Waters, Alyssa Taylor Wendt, Robert Wilson and Marina Zurkow
Vidas Perfectas
VIDAS PERFECTAS is an all new, Spanish language version of the classic avant-garde television opera from the 1980s: PERFECT LIVES.
Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives challenges the ways in which we perceive the relationship between language and music, mixing chanting, storytelling, meditation and ecstatic revelation. And as the world’s first ‘television opera,’ has almost single-handedly changed the way we think about opera, television, and performance.
In 2010, Issue Project Room was awarded an NEA grant to produce a new version of Perfect Lives in co-operation with Robert Ashley and Alex Waterman. The NEA grant provided the funds necessary to begin, but it constitutes only a fraction of the cost of a live performance run and an even smaller fraction of the cost of the television production.
Vidas Perfectas will be produced for television and appear in seven 30-minute episodes. We are now seeking partners throughout the country to co-produce the remaining episodes in the series. The newly completed installments will premiere at the hosting institution, joined by all episodes completed at the time of staging. This cumulative way of working allows us to spread the fund-raising and labour of creating a 3 hour opera, over a longer period of time. We can get deeper into the music and create shorter, more realistic goals along the way.
At the finish of all seven episodes, we intend to tour the full production (specifically in the U.S., Spain and Latin America), and to mount a complete television version on Spanish- and English language television. Furthermore, we plan to publish the resulting production as a CD and DVD.
ISSUE Receives Additional $1.1 Million For Construction of 110 Livingston
Dear Friends,
We are pleased to inform you that ISSUE Project Room has been granted an additional $1.1 million by the City of New York for construction of our theater at 110 Livingston Street! These funds are in addition to the $1 million previously granted in 2009 by the Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, and comes from the NY Department of Cultural Affairs ($500K), and Council Member Stephen Levin together with the Brooklyn Delegation and Council Member Brad Lander ($600K).
ISSUE has now raised $2.3 million towards the $3.7 million in costs necessary for the project.
We owe a tremendous thanks to you and everyone in our community whose unwavering support during the past two years of intense transition, helped to insure that we could reach this successful point.
Our next task is to raise $425,000 by December 31, 2011 to support the architectural and engineering design of the space. This past winter, we developed our vision for the space and produced cost estimates and initial concept renderings. We now need to move forward with the full designs.
If we are successful in raising these funds by December, we can move forward swiftly with the design process and open our new home in the fall of 2013. If you would like to help with this campaign or support our ongoing programs, consider a donation online now or becoming a member.
Thank you again for all of your support. We’ll be in contact as the project progresses. Until then, please keep an eye out for our fall newsletter,which you will be receiving within a few weeks, as well as the invitation for our October 1st Fall Art Auction and November 2nd Benefit Gala.
Warm regards,
Steve Wax Ed Patuto
Board Chair Executive Director
ISSUE’s 2012 Artists-in-Residence
This year ISSUE recruited MV Carbon, Marie Losier and Alan Licht as guest panelists in addition to a recommending committee comprised of Kathleen Forde, Claire Chase, Robert Crouch, Hamish Dunbar, Tony Herrington, Jason Kahn, Andrew Lampert, George Lewis, Yann Novak, Josh Rubin, Mat Schultz and Esther Venrooy. The panelists will work with ISSUE curators Lawrence Kumpf and Zach Layton, Development Coordinator Matthew Walker and Executive Director Ed Patuto in selecting four artists or collectives for the 2012 presenting year. We greatly look forward to working with these artists in the upcoming year.
(more…)
Floating Points Residencies 2011-2012
Photo by Bryan Derballa
The Floating Points programming explores the versatility of ISSUE Project Room’s house speaker system. Began in 2006 as Points In A Circle, an annual month-long series of multi-channel audio concerts featuring the Hemisphere speaker system, it became the Floating Points Festival in 2008 when Issue Project Room moved to the Old American Can Factory.
Starting in 2011, Floating Points is taking a different direction, away from a festival atmosphere and towards sustained residencies culminating in performances. This new approach will allow artists a longer period to familiarize themselves with the Hemisphere speaker system and create new multi-channel works that take advantage of its unique capabilities. The freedom to take the speakers off of the ceiling and sculpt them into evolving installations will encourage work that meaningfully engages the relationship of sound, movement and space.
Designed by sound artist and Floating Points curator Stephan Moore, this fifteen-channel installation of Hemisphere loudspeakers re-imagines the concert experience for both performer and audience. Each Hemisphere radiates sound in all directions, activating the acoustics of ISSUE’s unique concert space. Immersive sonic environments are generated, electronic sounds take on the intimacy of acoustic instruments, and location is liberated as a musical dimension. (more…)
Photos from John Moran + Saori (…in Thailand)
John Moran + Saori gave the New York premiere of their 2010 performance piece “John Moran and Saori (…in Thailand)” last weekend at ISSUE Project Room. Check out photos of their performance below. Photos by Brad Buehring.
Nate Wooley & James Ilgenfritz @ 110 Livingston
Photo by Brad Buehring
This past week, ISSUE held a reception and short concert by our Artists-in-Residence Nate Wooley & James Ilgenfritz [Artist-in-Residence Nate Wooley with MIVOS Quartet + Peter Evans: Saturday, 6/18, FREE | RSVP] at our future home at 110 Livingston in Downtown Brooklyn. This space, which has previously hosted more than a few string quartets, William Basinski, Ellen Fullman, and a solo acoustic (amplified) performance by Elliott Sharp, had still barely touched the performance style that makes up a healthy portion of our programming: free improvisation. Both Nate and James seem to approach improvisation as an act of listening. They leave ample space for silence, and even when playing solo don’t merely rattle off licks learned in middle school. The immediacy of their playing and their mental and emotional presence in the room is always felt.
This performance at 110 Livingston (their first public performance as a duo) seemed to amplify the artists’ awareness of their own sound. This highly reverberant space has not yet been acoustically treated, and when there are few other people and no furniture it’s difficult to even have a conversation in the room; any word spoken just bounces around the room for 7-8 seconds. So a duo performance by these two virtuoso listeners cannot help but include the room in the equation. The sounds are held, or blasted into the room. But they always step back to listen to the full sound. It’s always about the result, and about the aggregate of sounds heard, not only spoken; it’s not about the player.
Via the WFMU Free Music Archive
Wet Ink Ensemble (via the WFMU Free Music Archive)
Photo by Peter Gannushkin, DOWNTOWNMUSIC.NET
If Wet Ink Ensemble existed when “uptown” and “downtown” still had meaning, much of their programming would seem to land them decidedly north of 34th St. But like the capital-D Downtown groups, the bread and butter of their programming comes from the ensemble members themselves, with composers such as Alex Mincek, Kate Soper, Eric Wubbels, Sam Pluta, playing vital roles in the group. Lately, inching toward its teenage years, the ensemble has started to program ambitious portrait concerts of underheard-in-America European composers like Peter Ablinger and Matthias Spangler, usually in places like Columbia’s Miller Theater or various cultural centers.
However, Wet Ink always seems to make two or three appearances a year at ISSUE. Tonight, for the annual Darmstadt Institute, Wet Ink Ensemble will play new works by composer, trombonist, early AACM member, and Columbia professor George Lewis, vocalist Kate Soper, and pianist Eric Wubbels, with older works by Rick Burkhardt and Alex Mincek. The tracks below are saxophone & piano duos from the group’s March 2010 concert at ISSUE: “Pendulum III” by saxophonist and Artistic Director Alex Mincek; and “this is this is this is” by pianist and Executive Director Eric Wubbels.
Via the WFMU Free Music Archive.
Photos from Ellen Fullman @ 110 Livingston
Sculptor, composer, and performer Ellen Fullman performed on her Long String Instrument on May 22, 2011. Below are some photos from that event, which included collaborations with Sean Meehan, Theresa Wong, David Gamper, Monique Buzzarté, and David Douglas. Photos by Brad Buehring.
Tons of free music from Darmstadt Institute 2011 artists (via the WFMU Free Music Archive)
ISSUE Project Room’s annual Darmstadt Institute — which borrows the name (if not polemic) of the famous incubator of post-WWII difficult music — runs throughout the month of June, with imports like John Moran & Saori, Terre Thaemlitz (aka DJ Sprinkles), and Jennifer Walshe; Darmstadt stalwarts like TILT Brass, Claire Chase & Rebekeh Heller, and the Wet Ink Ensemble; and some revivals of underrepresented American artists such as David Borden’s Mother Mallard Portable Masterpiece Co. and Larry Austin. Almost all of these artists are represented in the mix directly to the right of these words, in works ranging from late-70s pieces by Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Co. – one of the first-ever synthesizer ensembles, counting Robert Moog and David Tudor among its members – to an improvisation by inimitable pianist Thollem McDonas, recorded last year in the Can Factory.
We’ll continue adding to this mix, as we excavate more recordings from the seemingly endless ISSUE archive, and feature tracks from artists once or twice a week. For now, though, check out the full Institute schedule and, if you’re in town, check us out.
(via the Free Music Archive)
Darmstadt Institute 2011: John Moran, Larry Austin, Terre Thaemlitz, David Borden, TILT Brass, Jennifer Walshe, and many more
Check out the full schedule of our Darmstadt Institute 2011. The festival welcomes the first U.S. performance by groundbreaking performance duo John Moran . . . and his neighbor, Saori since 2007, including the premiere of their new work “John Moran & Saori (…in Thailand).” Other highlights include: a celebration of composer Larry Austin‘s 80th birthday, including a presentation of his piece “Williams [re]Mix[ed],” an 8-channel tape piece based on John Cage’s classic work; performance artist and DJ Terre Thaemlitz in a new lecture/performance/DJ-set “Soulnessless”; David Borden‘s ensemble Mother Mallard Portable Masterpiece Company, one of the first synthesizer ensembles and a pioneer of first-wave minimalism; and finally, Darmstadt favorites such as TILT Brass, Jennifer Walshe, IKTUS Percussion, Wet Ink Ensemble, and many more.
Interview with Darmstadt Institute Curators Nick Hallett & Zach Layton
Zach Layton: We started using the name Darmstadt when we were a small listening party, and now we’re a series where the artists we present are playing at the actual Darmstadt MusikInstitut in Germany, like JACK quartet and ICE Ensemble (6.22: Claire Chase + Rebekah Heller). The very first day of our festival on June 1, we’ll be presenting a documentary about the history of Darmstadt in Germany called Knots and Fields. (6.1: “Knots and Fields”)
Nick Hallett: It’s by Andrew Chesher and David Ryan.
On January 25, ISSUE Project Room will inaugurate its new space at 110 Livingston with Gaudeamus Muziekweek, a four-day festival celebrating groundbreaking and challenging new music by emerging composers from around the world. Working in partnership ...
ISSUE is starting off the New Year with a change of scenery. That's right, Issue Project Room is moving out of our space at the Old American Can Factory and into 110 Livingston in Downtown Brooklyn. We've had a great run at the Can Factory,...