ISSUE’s first benefit event at our future home — the beautiful McKim, Mead, and White jewel box theater at 110 Livingston in Downtown Brooklyn — celebrating the 60th birthday of prolific composer and guitar virtuoso Elliott Sharp.

Composer, innovator, and guitar virtuoso Elliott Sharp is a leader in the New York arts community and a long-time supporter of ISSUE Project Room. Elliott’s rich history of collaboration with artists from various genres has been featured on hundreds of recordings and in live performances internationally.

Please join us on March 4, 2011 at the future home of ISSUE Project Room, a historic jewel-box theater at 110 Livingston in Downtown Brooklyn, for our first benefit event in the space in celebration of Elliott’s 60th birthday.  This special event is hosted by Jo Andres and Steve Buscemi and proceeds will provide support for groundbreaking new work by hundreds of artists in our community.

Friday March 4, 2011
110 Livingston (entrance at 22 Boerum Place)
Downtown Brooklyn

7:00 PM Reception

7:30 PM

Premiere of Trinity
A new work by Elliott Sharp (music), Jo Andres (film), and Steve Buscemi (narrative)

Velocity of Hue
Solo acoustic guitar performance by Elliott Sharp

Elliott Sharp with author Jack Womack
Elliott Sharp with poet/vocalist Tracie Morris

8:30 PM

The Boreal
Composed by Elliott Sharp. Commissioned by the West-Deutsch Rundfunk, Cologne.

Occam’s Razor
Commissioned by ISSUE Project Room
Double quartet composed by Elliott Sharp and performed by JACK Quartet and Sirius Quartet.

After-party

Committee Chairs:
Jo Andres • Steve Buscemi

Honorary Co-Chair:
Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz

Benefit Committee:
Paul Auster • Tony Conrad* • Toni Dove • R. Luke DuBois* • Erin Flannery • Nick Hallett • Sarah Garvey • David Grubbs • Shahzad Ismaily • Charlotta Kotik • Anjali Kumar* • John Latona* • Jonathan Lethem • Robert Longo* • Jeanne Lutfy* • Rick Moody • Stephan Moore • Andrea Reynosa • Linnaea Tillett • Kate Valk • Tom Van Den Bout • Kevin Vertrees • Anne Waldman • Steve Wax*

* Member of ISSUE’s Board of Directors

TICKETS:

Tables are $2,500 and include 10 VIP tickets with reserved seating.
VIP Tickets are $250 ($200 tax-deductible) and include invitation to the full evening of events.

To order tables, contact us at michelle at issueprojectroom dot org.
To order individual VIP tickets, visit Brown Paper Tickets:

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/139995

ELLIOTT SHARP is a central figure in the avant-garde music scene in New York City of over thirty years and a long-time supporter of ISSUE Project Room. Composer, multi-instrumentalist, and producer, he leads the projects Carbon,Orchestra Carbon, Tectonics and Terraplane, and has pioneered ways of applying fractal geometry, chaos theory, and genetic metaphors to musical composition and interaction. His collaborators have included Ensemble Modern; Qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; Radio-Symphony of Frankfurt; Debbie Harry, Perry Hoberman; blues legends Hubert Sumlin and Pops Staples; jazz greats Jack Dejohnette, Sonny Sharrock, Oliver Lake, and Billy Hart; turntable innovator Christian Marclay; and Bachir Attar of the Master Musicians Of Jahjouka, Morocco. Sharp’s work was featured in the New Music Stockholm festival (2008), at the Hessischer Rundfunk Klangbiennale (2007) and the Venice Biennale (2003, 2007).

JO ANDRES became known for her film/dance/light performances in the 1980s downtown New York at La Mama E.T.C., P.S. 122, and St. Marks Danspace. Her 1996 film Black Kites aired on PBS and was shown at Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, London, and Human Rights Watch Film Festivals.

STEVE BUSCEMI began his career in, and continues to support experimental theater, writing and performance.  From lead roles in television series like Boardwalk Empire to films like Fargo, Resevoir Dogs, Living in Oblivion, Trees Lounge, andGhost World to supporting roles and cameos in films such as The Big Lebowski, and Barton Fink, his presence breathes life into every corner of an artwork.

JACK QUARTET Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Ari Streisfeld, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Kevin McFarland, the JACK Quartet has performed at the Library of Congress, Miller Theatre, and the Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik. They have recently recorded the complete quartets of Iannis Xenakis on Mode Records, called “exceptional,” and “beautifully harsh” by the New Yorker’s Alex Ross.

SIRIUS QUARTET Violinists Fung Chern Hwei and Rachel Golub, violist Ron Lawrence, and cellist Jeremy Harman have championed a wide range of classical music and “comprovisation.” Expanding beyond the classical repertoire, these four strong improvisers and composers have performed at Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall, the Knitting Factory, and The Kitchen.

TRACIE MORRIS is an interdisciplinary poet who has worked extensively as a sound artist, writer and multimedia performer. She has presented installations at the Whitney Biennial, and is a founding member of the Black Rock Coalition.

JACK WOMACK is an American author of fiction and speculative fiction “packed with grimly amusing social satire” (Jim McClellan). In addition to a number of novels, he wrote the libretto for Elliott Sharp’s opera Binibon (2005).

Lighting by Seth Kirby and Brock Monroe (Joshua Light Show)

ISSUE gratefully acknowledges sponsor support from: