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.

Z: The following night (6.2: Alvin Lucier’s Queen of the South + On Structure) is going to be a rare presentation of Alvin Lucier’s Queen of the South, which investigates the physicality of sound. The next weekend, we’re thrilled to be presenting the Wet Ink Ensemble, whom we’re huge supporters of (6.10: Wet Ink Ensemble).

N: You’re starting to see one thing we love to do, which is to put different generations of composers and musicians in conversation with one another.

Z: So, the night after Wet Ink, which involves all somewhat young composers, we’re going to have an 80th birthday celebration of the great Larry Austin (6.11: Larry Austin at Eighty).  He did a lot of tape manipulations with John Cage and is an incredibly fascinating composer in his own right. He helped compose the completion of the Ives Universe Symphony, in a microtonal version.

N: One of the shows I’m most excited about is electronic composer Terre Thaemliz (6.14: Terre Thaemlitz’s Soulnessless). It’s hard to describe Thaemlitz’s work, but she emerged in the 1990s from the electronic, ambient, IDM realm, and then went more toward performance. Now she lives in Japan and hasn’t appeared much in New York in the past 10 years. She’s promised a really exciting work –

Z: Soulnessless, it’s called. It’s a new project – it’s kind of a deep meditation.

N: We’re striking out in a new direction with Darmstadt – both in terms of the Institute and in terms of our plans for the organization—with the complexity of the intermedia works we present.  We’re opening up now to present more opera and performance.

Z: In regards to performance, the night that I’m probably most excited about is John Moran (6.24 & 6.25: John Moran and his neighbor Saori).

N:  Moran uses the vocabulary of theater and of the mundane to create incredibly unique repetition-based work, but his career has mainly been in experimental performance.  I’m not even really sure he is a composer in any traditional sense, but he caught the attention of Philip Glass in the late 80s, when he was maybe still a teenager and his major works are operas produced at Lincoln Center and The Kitchen. He lives in Thailand now, and this will be his first time playing New York in many years. He’s a world-class artist, and we feel totally blessed that we get to present his amazing work and give him a hero’s welcome home.

N: And David Borden, who is coming in from, well, Ithaca (laughter) (6.29: David Borden and Mother Mallard Ensemble). In collaboration with Bob Moog, he started the Mother Mallard Portable Ensemble, which is one of the first electronic music groups. His major opus, The Continuing Series of Counterpoint, involves the live execution of synthesized arpeggios to intense effect. We’re interested in casting a very wide net of how to describe the experimental tradition, but I could devote the entire Darmstadt series to first-wave minimalism if I had my way.

Z: That’s where I come in. (laughter)

N: For our Institute finale, we get to present one of our favorite young composers – someone who we’ve presented many years here at Darmstadt – Jennifer Walshe (7.1: Jennifer Walshe + Nick Hallett). How would you describe her?

Z: Well, I think she’s working in an incredibly advanced place regarding extended vocal technique and opera composition and musical theater in a broad sense.

N: The way in which she uses her voice as an expressive tool can veer into the bizarre, referencing pulp culture or different historical sensibilities.  Sometimes her work can be very campy­–

Z: Or very emotionally arresting. There are times that she can express fear and anxiety in her voice in an incredibly powerful way.

N: I’m enjoying trying to describe these composers whose work is completely indescribable. This is something we strive for in who we want to present: who’s making work that’s completely out there, that doesn’t pander to the marketplace aesthetic which is kind of ubiquitous right now in new music. I found it interesting to read the recent article in New York Magazine saying that this “omnivorous generation of composers could use something to rage against.” But there’s plenty to be outraged by, and most everyone we like at Darmstadt rages against all of it.

Patuto succeeds Suzanne Fiol, ISSUE’s Founder/Artistic Director who lost her courageous battle with cancer in October 2009. “ISSUE Project Room is at a pivotal moment in its history, and I am honored to have the opportunity to advance Suzanne’s vision for experimental arts and help build a new home for ISSUE at 110 Livingston in Brooklyn,” said Patuto.

Patuto enters ISSUE’s family in the midst of its $2.5 million capital campaign for its prospective long-term arts center at 110 Livingston Street. To date, ISSUE has raised $1.2 million, thanks in large part to the Brooklyn Borough President, the New York State Council on the Arts, and CHORA.

According to ISSUE Board Chair Steve Wax, “Patuto is joining ISSUE at an invigorating and crucial time. Everyone at ISSUE is wildly excited about Ed joining us on the journey we call ISSUE Project Room. Patuto’s background as both an artist and an arts administrator, the depth of his curatorial experience, his years of successful capital project management, and his passion for our mission made him the outstanding candidate to lead ISSUE. Ed is one of the few leaders who can focus us, the staff and board – on our new theater’s renovation and continued fundraising—as well as maintain the development of our programming.”

Wax commended the senior management and the entire staff at ISSUE for their admirable performance during the search for a new Executive Director. ISSUE engaged a Search Committee to assist with the international search process resulting in over 200 applicants. It speaks to the visionary leadership of ISSUE’s Board that they chose an Executive Director from the West Coast with a background in both visual arts and performance as well as an experienced fundraiser.

By procuring resources for projects, arranging collaborations both in the arts and in other disciplines, and providing a welcoming context and audience for testing provocative ideas and work, Patuto will help expand ISSUE’s profile both locally and nationally. “I plan to continue ISSUE’s strong tradition of supporting local artists and at the same time see ISSUE as an incubator for creating new collaborations and dialogue between experimental artists here and out West, as well as internationally,” says Patuto.

About Ed Patuto

Ed Patuto has 20 years of experience fundraising and working in arts organizations on the West Coast. He recently served as the Co-Founder/Director of VOLUME, a CA-based curatorial catalyst for interdisciplinary new media work concentrating on the nexus of music and visual arts practices ranging from the experimental to popular culture. Additional positions have included: Director of Development for both the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles and the Montalvo Arts Center; Vice President of Institutional Advancement for both the San Francisco Art Institute and Saybrook University; and Producer/Curator of several exhibitions, performance series and events including VOLUME’s Restless Brilliance at the Armand Hammer Museum Los Angeles, Electronic Cinema Southern Exposure, San Francisco, Scores Lawrimore Project Seattle, Resonant Forms Festival, Los Angeles, and rE/visioning the Collection at de Young Museum, San Francisco to name a few. Patuto has a solid link to the New York area – alumnus of State University of New York and Ailey School of American Dance and used to live in Brooklyn, just three blocks from ISSUE.

Pre-Renovation Candlelit Performance of Morton Feldman’s Second String Quartet by Ne(x)tworks

Q2 to Webcast Entire Performance LIVE:
Q2, Classical 105.9 WQXR’s contemporary music stream – in partnership with WNYC Culture – will present a live audio webcast of this rare event.

The public will have a chance to attend a rare performance of Morton Feldman’s String Quartet No. 2 in its entirety when ISSUE Project Room opens its doors at 110 Livingston St. for a pre-renovation, inaugural Open House event. Performed by Ne(x)tworks, the six hour-long contemporary masterpiece will be free to the public, commemorating ISSUE’s first concert in their future Downtown Brooklyn home.

String Quartet No. 2 has been performed in its entirety only a few times, the first being in 1999 by the FLUX Quartet at Greenwich Village’s Cooper Union. The Ne(x)tworks quartet (which includes Cornelius Dufallo and Kenji Bunch, formerly of FLUX) will play the entire piece by candlelight in the cloistered hall while audience members are invited to stay for as long as little as they like. The beauty of candlelight is also a necessity as the space is still raw, in need of renovation and lighting.

“Ne(x)tworks is thrilled to present Feldman’s masterful Second String Quartet at ISSUE Project Room as our artistic endorsement of their fabulous new concert venue [at 110 Livingston],” says Ne(x)tworks’ Director, Cornelius Dufallo. “The musical community of New York City has been eagerly awaiting the opening of this performance space.”

Called his “most extreme” composition, Feldman’s String Quartet No. 2 (1983) is a collective paragon encompassing Feldman’s signature free rhythms, muted pitches, quiet and slowly unfolding music, and his experiments with duration.

“The focus at the time [of the premiere in 1999] seemed to be on how we were going to play for six hours without stopping,” Dufallo reflects. “As we immersed ourselves in the music, however, this began to change: we found that duration is by no means the most interesting aspect of this work. The ‘athleticism’ became more of a secondary concern to us. In this work, duration acts as a canvas, on which Feldman paints a stunningly beautiful encomium to the eternal marriage of sound and time. The piece must exist on a large scale in order to portray this relationship.”

In 2008 ISSUE Project Room won the bid for a 20-year, rent-free lease to occupy the landmark theatre at 110 Livingston St., an architecturally significant (McKim, Mead & White, 1926) and stunningly beautiful 4800 square foot performance space located in the former New York City Dept. of Education headquarters in Downtown Brooklyn. Once renovated, this space will offer opportunities to increase ISSUE’s audience, implement new programs and advance Brooklyn’s place as a cultural epicenter.

While this is an extraordinary opportunity, it is also an enormous challenge. ISSUE must still raise well over half a million dollars towards the $2.5 M needed for basic renovations. We hope that the community will join ISSUE on this amazing journey toward building a world-class center for experimental culture.

ISSUE Project Room’s Inaugural Concert @ 110 Livingston
Ne(x)tworks Performs Morton Feldman’s String Quartet No. 2
April 11, 2010
FREE
Reception: 11 am
Performance: 11:30 am – 5:30 pm
110 Livingston St. (Entrance on Boerum Place)
Brooklyn, NY  11201

An Avant-Garde Arts Group Bites Off a Lot to Chew

When it comes to the avant-garde side of the arts, the numbers tend to be pretty small. Record sales of a thousand or two, if you’re lucky; theater audiences in the dozens, not hundreds.

But last year Issue Project Room, a nonprofit arts space that was founded in the East Village and for the last four years has been in Brooklyn, was dealt a dauntingly large number. As part of a city deal, a developer that was converting the former Board of Education building in downtown Brooklyn into condominiums was required to offer 5,000 square feet on its ground floor to a cultural group on a 20-year, rent-free lease.

Issue Project Room won the bid. (Yes!) But then found that the space needed $2.5 million in renovations. (No!)

The organization’s leaders managed to raise about $350,000 but finally were able to exhale when Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn borough president, called late last month with the news that he was allocating $1.1 million for Issue Project Room’s renovations, as part of the $37.7 million in capital funds that he has the authority to distribute for the current fiscal year.

The building, at 110 Livingston Street, was designed by McKim, Mead & White and opened in 1926 as a home for the Elks club. By 1940 the Board of Education had taken it over, and the city sold it six years ago to the Brooklyn developer Two Trees Management for more than $45 million.

With Issue Project Room, whose proposal to Two Trees won over those from more than 100 other organizations, the building will become a home for all kinds of experimental music, theater, dance, literary readings and film. “A Carnegie Hall for the avant-garde,” Suzanne Fiol, the group’s founder and creative director, said.

“I truly believe that this is the work that keeps our culture going forward,” Ms. Fiol said. “We want to be an important space for music and film and literature and poetry and video and sound art. And a little bit of dance.”

Most of the space is a wide, marble-lined room somewhere between a courtroom and a dance hall, said Sarah Garvey, an Issue Project Room spokeswoman. In addition, there is room for offices and an additional space that could be used for a library.

Ms. Fiol opened the first Issue Project Room in 2003 in a former garage on Sixth Street in the East Village and two years later moved to a former oil silo on the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, where she put on shows like an extremely rare visit by the reclusive Texas musician Jandek.

In 2007 Issue Project Room had to move again, to the former Old American Can Factory, nearby in Carroll Gardens. This month that space has its Floating Points Festival, with experimental musicians like Alan Licht and Tony Conrad (who is an Issue Project Room board member) making use of a custom-built hemispherical speaker system that hangs from the ceiling.

Whether the idea of a big, official institution like Carnegie Hall is antithetical to the spirit of the avant-garde is an open question. But with Manhattan rapidly losing performance spaces devoted to experimental arts — like Tonic on the Lower East Side, which closed in 2007 — some kind of home is necessary, and Mr. Markowitz believes that Brooklyn is the perfect place for it.

“Issue Project Room is well respected, avant-garde, cutting-edge, in-your-face — you know what? That’s Brooklyn too,” Mr. Markowitz said. “I don’t understand half the things they do, and when they tell me about them, they lose me. But that’s not the point.” The point, he added, was that “the arts create jobs.”

His contribution brings the renovation budget to within about $300,000 of what it needs for the nuts-and-bolts first phase.

Ms. Fiol said she was at first reluctant to apply for the new space because at the time her organization had no money. But having three homes in six years taught her to keep an open mind.

“Everybody gets kicked out of their space, or they end up shutting down,” Ms. Fiol said. “But instead of getting all flipped out about that, I took the road of just finding a new space. And I’ve been really lucky.”

We’re pretty excited to be working with WFMU on their new and fantastic Free Music Archive to put up some selected excerpts of performances going on here.

The Free Music Archive is a social music website built around a curated library of free, legal audio. Fellow curators include radio stations like KEXP (Seattle) and KBOO (Portland OR), webcasters like DUBLAB (Los Angeles) and Halas Radio (Israel), netlabels (Comfort Stand), and amazing online collectives like CASH Music. 

check it out here:

http://freemusicarchive.org/

This is a very special limited edition Rogues Gallery t-shirt designed specifically for ISSUE Project Room. Rogues Gallery generously designed these one of a kind t-shirts to help us raise money to move into our new space at 110 Livingston.  Sizes variable.

available through etsy.com