Photo by Walter Wlodarczyk

FRIDAY, DEC 22 - ca. 9:00pm
Phill Niblock 90th Birthday Winter Solstice: 24 Hours of Music and Film

TILT Brass members CJM & hornist Nicolee Kuester perform inside PN’s Exploratory (Rhine version, “Looking for Daniel”) (2019)

Roulette Intermedium
509 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn

This event run from noon to midnight on both THU, DEC 21 & FRI, DEC 22 

Roulette Event Page

ISSUE Project Room 20th Anniversary
An Improvisational Synphony: Coordinated by Suzane Langille

First Unitarian Congregational Society 
119 Pierrepont St, Brooklyn, NY

IPR event page

Saturday, December 16th at 8pm, a diverse array of twenty artists come together in An Improvisational Symphony to close ISSUE's 20th Anniversary Season, coordinated by vocalist and longtime ISSUE friend, Suzanne Langille. The celebratory concert will take place at First Unitarian Congregational Society in Downtown Brooklyn. In collaboration with the ISSUE team, Langille has invited a wide range of musicians - many with deep ties to ISSUE’s history - involving numerous master and emerging practitioners. The program is split into four movements, each representing a traditional element that will inspire groups of five musicians to present 20-minutes of improvised sounds. These include:

First movement (Earth): Allegro featuring: Daniel Carter (saxophone & trumpet), Loren Connors (guitar), William Hooker (vocal), Chris McIntyre (trombone) & Lucie Vítková (percussion)

Second movement (Water): Andante or adagio featuring: Che Buford (violin), Madison Greenstone (contrabass clarinet), James Ilgenfritz (bass), Suzanne Langille (voice & maraca) & Joanna Mattrey (viola)

Third movement (Air): Moderato featuring: Ras Moshe Burnett (flute), Nicolee Kuester (french horn), Billy Martin (percussion), Ava Mendoza (guitar) & Aliya Ultan (cello)

Fourth movement (Fire): Finale–allegro featuring: Zoh Amba (saxophone), Nava Dunkelman (percussion), gabby fluke-mogul (violin), Alan Licht (guitar) & Lee Odom (clarinet) 

LPR event page



Personnel:  Billy Martin, drums; Nels Cline, guitar; Henry Fraser, bass; Zach Layton, 17-string bass; Eszter Balint, violin; Pauline Harris, violin; Conrad Harris, violin; Jessica Pavone, viola; Joanna Mattrey, viola; Alex Waterman, cello; Matana Roberts, saxophone; Lea Bertucci, saxophone; Matt Bauder, saxophone; Catherine Sikora, saxophone; Samantha Kochis, flute; Laura Cocks, flute; Katie Porter, clarinet; Kyra Sims, French horn; Ben Neill, trumpet; Chris Williams, trumpet; Chris McIntyre, trombone; Pauline Roberts, percussion; Ben Vida, synthesizer; Cecilia Lopez, synthesizer; Marina Rosenfeld, keyboard; shahzad ismaily, synthesizer; Yuka Honda, electronics; Dafna Naphtali, voice; Nick Hallett, voice; Nicky Paraiso, voice; Shara Lunon, voice; Natalie Greffel, voice

THE QUEST: EPIC JOURNEYS
November 9, 2023, 7:30pm
Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall

Vimbayi Kaziboni, conductor
Sidney Outlaw, baritone
Luke Dubois, video design

Augusta Read Thomas: Sun Dance—In memoriam Oliver Knussen (NY Premiere) 6’
George Lewis: Weathering (World Premiere/ACO Commission) 15’
Jack Hughes: Three Ways of Getting There (World Premiere/ACO Underwood commission) 10-12’
Guillermo Klein: The Kingdom (CoLABoratory/World Premiere) 10’
Nina C. Young: Out of whose womb came the ice (World Premiere, Carnegie Hall/ACO Co-commission) 28’

Tickets
ACO Event Page
 

FOREST SONG
Conceived/Originated by John Hastings

Saturday, October 14, 2023: 2pm & 4pm
Sunday, October 15, 2023: 1pm & 3pm
Each performance approx. 60 minutes

Inwood Hill Park, Manhattan, New York:
A to Inwood / 207 or 1 to 215th St. Enter at Shorakkopoch Rock [map]

Forest Song is a free music performance that takes place in the last, original site of Pre-Columbian Mannahatta: Inwood Hill Park. Nestled within a valley, near ancient glacial potholes, caves, and cold springs, musicians are spread throughout the forest, performing a variety of sonic materials. Harmonies are reflected, words appear, and the melodies from revolutionary hymns are re-cycled, all conjuring a human and arboreal conversation. A Forest Song gathers everyone together over distance, a unitary statement that underscores the fundamental relationships that foster all our existences in this world. Over the course of an hour performance, the audience is free to wander the park, to hear the musicians at a distance, while also observing them close-by.

Myths and stories swirl around our forests, some of them fanciful and fantastic, others feed into age-old tropes of colonial settlement. They have been many things to humans: a source of fuel, shelter, fear. They are a place of mystery and repose. Forest Song takes these many iterations of human conception of the forest to fashion a poly-narrative: a Native American home, a European folk drama, a technocratic “shelterbelt”, and now a conserved piece of our future. Forests are a mirror for humans: the reflection of our wants and desires throughout our years of existence.

Featuring:
TILT Brass: Christopher McIntyre - trombone, James Rogers - trombone, Nicolee Kuester - horn, Blair Hamrick - horn, Rebecca Steinberg - trumpet, Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet
with
Iván Barenboim - clarinet, Katie Porter - clarinet, Jessica Schmitz - flute, Eva Ding - flute, Casey Anderson - saxophone

The Team:
John P. Hastings - originator; Aaron Meicht - music director, trumpet; Carolina Gomez - costuming; Benjamin Mayock - design; Shannon Sindelar - producer; Michelle Tabnick - PR 

Forest Song is made possible in part with funds from Creative Engagement , a regrant program supported by The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) in partnership with the City Council ,and administered by LMCC. This project is made possible in part with funds from UMEZ Arts Engagement, a regrant program supported by the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone (UMEZ), and administered by LMCC.

EarShot: ACO’s 2023 Working Rehearsal at New School Tishman Auditorium

ACO | SONiC Fest Event Page



 

Either/Or Ensemble presents Perspectives and Disclosures, an evening of solo, duo, and ensemble music assembled by EO Curator and trombonist Chris McIntyre at historic Speyer Hall at University Settlement House in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Works by Toshi Ichiyangi, George E. Lewis, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Mendi+Keith Odabike, Diderik Wagenaar, and Joanna Ward.

Either/Or Event Page
Ticket Purchase

Program
Toshi Ichiyangi Perspectives (1986)
for solo violin
Diderik Wagenaar La Caccia (1996)
for trombone solo
Dorothy Rudd Moore Moods (1969/2020)
for viola & cello
Paula Matthusen forgiveness anthems (2010)
for solo flute & fixed media
Mendi+Keith Odabike Selections from Big House/Disclosure (2007)
tutti
Joanna Ward I AM HOPING I DON'T MISS YOU (2020)
tutti

Personnel
Pala Garcia - violin
Margaret Lancaster - flute
Christopher McIntyre - trombone, synth, curator
John Popham - cello
Kal Sugatski - viola 

Talea Ensemble & Harlem Chamber Players
Julius Eastman's "Femenine"

Kenneth C. Griffin Sidewalk Studio at David Geffin Hall
Part of NY Philharmonic's Artist Spotlight series

NY Philharmonic event page 
Tickets
 

Talea & HCP rehearsing in Oct. 2021

EO plays Infrequent Seams Festival
Monday, December 19, 2022
8:00 PM 9:00 PM
Roulette event page

Either/Or folds into the evening-length Infrequent Seams Festival at Roulette with Profiles, a wide ranging program of works by a multi-generational group of composers. Its set includes chamber music rarities by Talib Rasul Hakim (1940-88) and Jō Kondō, a recent solo cello work by James Díaz, and an evocative graphic score by Kathernine Yo.

PROGRAM
Talib Rasul Hakim - Duo (1963) for flute & clarinet
James Díaz - en tiempos de voz pasiva (2019) for cello & elec.
Jo Kondo - A Scribe (1985) for flute, trombone, piano, perc
Talib Rasul Hakim - Profiles (1964) for clarinet, trumpet, trombone, cello
Katherine Young - For Autonauts, For Travelers (2012) - tutti

PERSONNEL
Richard Carrick - piano; Jonthan Finlayson - trumpet; Madison Greenstone - clarinet; Margaret Lancaster - flute; Chris McIntyre - trombone; Chris Nappi - percussion; John Popham - cello 

Intimacy of Detail: The Music of Chiyoko Szlavnics

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 2 AT 9:00PM
TENRI CULTURAL INSTITUTE OF NEW YORK
43A WEST 13TH STREET NEW YORK, NY, 10011

On Wednesday, November 2, 2022, at Tenri Cultural Institute, Either/Or presents Intimacy of Detail, a special performance centered on the singular sound world of Canadian-born, Berlin-based composer Chiyoko Szlavnics. The program retrospectively focuses on Szlavnics’ work from the mid-Aughts forward. From the year 2000 onward, she “developed a compositional approach based on self-generated drawings. The drawings enabled her to conceive and realise a kind of music, which promotes the perception of certain psychoacoustic phenomena (beating and combination tones), through her sensitive setting of ratio-related pitch material in sustains and extended glissandi, and her careful orchestration.” The string quartet Gradients Of Detail (2005/6) is a prime example of this method of transliteration which the stellar string players of Either/Or will bring to life within the assiduously close listening space of Tenri. Paired with the larger ensemble work (a)long lines… (2004/rev. 2017) and Constellations I-III (2011) for piano & sine tones, EO’s local audience will gain meaningful access to Szlavnics' involving aural environments.

PROGRAM
Chiyoko Szlavnics, composer

(a)long lines: we'll draw our own lines (2004/rev. 2017)
flute, trombone, violin, violoncello, percussion, sine tones

Constellations I-III (2011)
piano and sine tones

Gradients Of Detail (2005/6)
string quartet

PERSONNEL
Richard Carrick - piano (EO Director); Jennifer Choi - violin; Pala Garcia - violin; Margaret Lancaster - flute; Hannah Levinson - viola; Alex Lough - electronics & sound; Chris McIntyre - trombone (curator); Chris Nappi - percussion; John Popham - cello   

GRADIENT OF DETAIL (2005) - DRAWINGS BY THE COMPOSER

Tipping Utopia Toward Kazuko Miyamoto
Japan Society
Saturday, July 16, 2pm and 5pm



This newly commissioned performance brings to life the works on view in Kazuko Miyamoto: To perform a line (exhibition now extended through July 24). Yoshiko Chuma, conceptual performing artist, dancer, choreographer and director of The School of Hard Knocks, combines movement and improvised music, erasing the boundaries between onstage and backstage, and between artistic practices. In 1979, Chuma performed among Miyamoto’s string constructions installed as part of the artist’s solo exhibition at A.I.R. Gallery (Yoshiko Chuma in Kazuko Miyamoto: A Girl on Trail Dinosaur). Now, Chuma reconnects with Miyamoto through this event, which runs throughout the entire gallery space. The performance also features three musicians: double bassist Robert Black, viola and violinist Jason Kao Hwang and trombonist Christopher McIntyre.

Concept and direction by Yoshiko Chuma, Artistic Director of The School of Hard Knocks.

"This season’s Sounds & Stories series draws to a close on June 28 with an account of Femenine, an improvisatory tour de force by the late Julius Eastman, who strove to be “Black to the fullest, a musician to the fullest, [and] a homosexual to the fullest,” and whose take on minimalism was “idiosyncratic and perhaps ahead of its time” (New York Times)."

Event page

VIOLIN
Conrad Harris

VIOLA
Dana Kelley

BASS
John Feeney

ALTO SAXOPHONE
Lino Gomez

BASSOON
William Hestand

PERCUSSION
Maya Gunji

PIANO
Margaret Kampmeier

SYNTHESIZER
Christopher McIntyre

Sunday, May 15 at 6pm ET
​
A live outdoor performance at Prospect Park's Concert Grove Pavilion featuring work by The School of Hard Knocks (Yoshiko Chuma + Chris McIntyre), Maria Bauman, Xan Burley + Alex Springer, Sofia Engelman + Em Papineau, and Dancewave Youth Company/Rena Butler.
​To attend from afar, tune in on Instagram Live.

​DIRECTIONS:
Prospect Park's Concert Grove Pavilion (Brooklyn, NY // Lenapehoking)

Yvonne Rainer, CJM, David Behrman

YVONNE RAINER’S "REMEMBERING AND DISMEMBERING TRIO A" WITH BRITTANY BAILEY / DAVID BEHRMAN’S "OPEN SPACE WITH BRASS" WITH ED BEAR & ENSEMBLE
Wed 06 Apr, 2022, 8pm
The Flamboyán Theater at The Clemente
IPR Event Page
 

L-to-R: Aliya Ultan, Alexandria Smith, Madison Greenstone, CJM
 

Wednesday, April 6th, ISSUE & The Clemente present an evening of pioneering work from choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer and composer David Behrman. Highlighting the artists’ work interpreted and presented by a new generation of artists, the evening features choreographer and performer Brittany Bailey performing Remembering and Dismembering Trio A (1966 - 2020), with excerpts from Peter Schjeldahl’s “77 Sunset Me.”

The program also features David Behrman’s Open Space with Brass, performed by Ed Bear and an ensemble under the direction of Chris McIntyre. The piece was originally commissioned for the final performances of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company (performed with TILT Brass) at the Park Avenue Armory in December, 2011.

Remembering and Dismembering Trio A (1966 - 2020), with excerpts from Peter Schjeldahl’s “77 Sunset Me,” is choreographed by Yvonne Rainer and performed by Brittany Bailey. Rainer choreographed Trio A in 1966, and performed it for the camera in 1978. Written for a solo performer, it incorporates no music and features a seamless flow of everyday movements like toe tapping, walking, and kneeling. In an interview with Lyn Blumenthal, Rainer describes “[It] would be about a kind of pacing where a pose is never struck [...] There would be no dramatic changes, like leaps. There was a kind of folky step that had a rhythm to it, and I worked a long time to get the syncopation out of it.” Trio A positioned Rainer as a leader among the dancers, composers, and visual artists who were involved in the Judson Dance Theater (which she co-founded in 1962), an avant-garde collaborative that ushered in an era of contemporary dance through stripped-down choreography and casual and spontaneous performances.

David Behrman’s Open Space with Brass follows in the tradition of electroacoustic sound supported throughout the history of Merce Cunningham Dance Company. The piece also refers to the antiphonal music that Giovanni Gabrieli created for the Basilica di San Marco in Venice at the turn of the 17th Century. Gabrieli’s work made such specific use of the cathedral’s acoustics that groups of brass instruments situated in opposing choir lofts could be heard with clarity at distant points. Interactive music software, originally made for the site-specific 15-channel sound system that was in use at the Park Avenue Armory, linked the acoustic and electronic elements of Open Space: a 6-piece ensemble of trumpets and trombones filling the enormous Armory Drill Hall space with live and digitally processed sound. Behrman has recently reorganized elements of this software to be more accessible for other musicians to play. Ed Bear, who returns to ISSUE after an ambitious re-staging of John Cage's Variations VII in 2016, manipulates the software, while trombonist Chris McIntyre leads an ensemble of cello (Aliya Ultan), bass clarinet (Madison Greenstone), and trumpet (Alexandria Smith).

The evening will conclude with a Q&A with Yvonne Rainer & David Behrman moderated by Chris McIntyre. They will discuss the history, transition, and legacy of their work as well as the process of teaching, learning, and presenting the pieces.

Choreographer and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer trained with Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham as a dancer, and was a co-founding member of the Judson Dance Theater in 1962. She sought to blur the lines between performers and non-performers, and incorporated gestures and pedestrian movements, as well as classical dance steps and theatricality into her choreography. Her body of work has spanned multiple disciplines and movements including dance, film, minimalism, conceptual art, and postmodernism. In 1972, Rainer transitioned to filmmaking following a fifteen-year career as a choreographer and dancer from 1960 to 1975. After making seven experimental feature-length films, she returned to dance in 2000 via a commission from the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation (“After Many a Summer Dies the Swan”). Her dances and films have been seen throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia in concert halls and museum retrospectives. Her publications include “Feelings Are Facts: a Life,” "Work: 1961-73," "The Films of Yvonne Rainer," "A Woman Who…: Essays, Interviews, Scripts,” “Moving and Being Moved,” and “Poetry.”

Brittany Bailey has trained with Merce Cunningham as well as whirled with the dervishes of the Mevlevi Order. Bailey has performed at MoMA with Yvonne Rainer in the exhibition, Judson Dance Theater: The Work Is Never Done (2018) and in Marina Abramović’s retrospective, The Artist is Present (2010). In 2011, Bailey was a member of the Michael Clark Company for performances at the Tate Modern. Bailey currently studies at Columbia University.

David Behrman is a composer and artist active since the 1960s. Over the years he has made sound and multimedia installations for gallery spaces as well as musical compositions for performance in concerts. Most of his pieces feature exible structures and the use of technology in personal ways; compositions rely on interactive real-time relationships with imaginative performers. Together with Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma, Behrman founded the Sonic Arts Union in 1966. He had a long association with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as composer and performer, created music for several of the Company’s repertory pieces, and was a member of the Company’s Music Committee during its last years. Behrman has received grants from the NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, the Japan-United States Friendship Commission, the D.A.A.D., the Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Henry Cowell Foundation. He was a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in 2016. Audio recordings of his works are on the XI, Lovely Music, Pogus, New World, WERGO, Black Truffle and Alga Marghen labels.

Ed Bear is an American interdisciplinary artist, musician, and engineer. Their work with robotics, sound, video, transmission, and collective improvisation recalibrates social relationships with material technology and waste. As an educator and designer committed to an equitable, open source world, they research material reuse as social practice. Bear has been awarded several competitive residences, fellowships and grants. They completed artist/technology residencies at Pioneer Works (2019), Harvest Works (2017), Signal Culture (2017), Until 11 (2016), Wave Farm (2015), LMCC Swing Space (2012), Free 103.9 AIRtime Fellow (2010) and received a Roulette Emerging Composer Commission (2008). They have shown work at various galleries and institutions internationally. Bear has toured extensively in North America and Europe as a performer and teacher, working with organizations including: The London School of Economics, IXDA, Museo Tamayo, The Mattress Factory, The Montreal Pop Festival, Moogfest, and Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Their music is available on Peira, Azul Discographica, Ever/Never, Roar Tapes, and several other record labels. In 2009 and 2010, Bear received NSF and other funds to study e-waste streams as educational resources, software defined radio, and novel energy harvesting, utilizing ionic polymer metal composites. As a research specialist at the Lighting Research Center (2012-2013), funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, they developed control solutions for emerging solid-state lighting systems. Until 2019, they worked with littleBits, Inc. developing gender-neutral, modular electronics for education. Bear recently founded Kin Circuits, a platform to elevate maintenance, care, repair, and reuse in the face of unsustainable consumption and alienating technologies.

Christopher McIntyre performs on trombone and electronics in various musical contexts within the protean NYC community. He also composes for various media and instrumental forces, experimenting with recorded and synthesized sound and using transformational structures to create a narrative of evolving sonic states. He is Director and Co-Founder of TILT Brass, programming curator for Either/Or Ensemble, independent curator for venues including ISSUE Project Room and The Kitchen, teacher at Mannes School of Music at The New School, and frequent performer in groups such as TILT, Either/Or, SEM and Talea Ensembles, among many others. cmcintyre.com

Praised by The New York Times for her “appealingly melancholic sound” and “entertaining array of distortion effects,” Alexandria Smith is a trumpeter, composer/multimedia artist, curator, and recording engineer studying at the University of California San Diego. Her current projects focus on the use of biofeedback as an interfacing tool for musicians, interactive media (audio and visual), and performance based research. Previous engagements include her week (curation) at the Stone, performances at the La Semana Internacional de Improvisación, trumpet and electronics Luminous Tubes Concert at the FONT Festival 2019, performing as a soloist in the Martha Graham Dance Company 90th Anniversary Concert, John Zorn's Improv Night at the Stone, and as an ensemble member of Lorin Maazel's Castleton Festival.

Aliya Ultan is a composer, improviser, cellist, and vocalist from Brooklyn, NY. Born into a family of artists and musicians, Ultan was immersed in a variety of creative mediums and environments from a young age. Ultan primarily performs as a singer-cellist, using both instruments to contort pitch centers and embrace a kind of noise based maximalism within the constraints of a purely acoustic set-up. This approach has led to the development of techniques such as particular ways of detuning the cello to expand its range, allowing it to cross instrumental bounds. In addition to her sound focused research, Ultan has created works for film that involve breaking, burying, and submerging cellos underwater.

Madison Greenstone is a clarinetist currently based between New York City and San Diego. She has performed as a featured artist of the Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik and the Lucerne Festival Academy. Notable performances have been as a soloist presented by ISSUE Project Room, as part of the Merce Cunningham Centennial Night of 100 Solos in Los Angeles, in recital at the Vigeland Mausoleum (Oslo) and at the Fondation Abbaye Royaumont. Madison is the clarinetist of TAK Ensemble, and a founding member of the [Switch~ Ensemble]. She can be heard on Wandelweiser Editions, Another Timbre, and on the TAK Editions Podcast. Madison develops collaborative works that explore brend-based awareness in Hermetic Art Party with Anthony Vine (guitar and objects) and Katy Gilmore (projections). She works closely on creative projects and large-scale low-clarinets works with Michelle Lou. Further ongoing collaborations are with Timothy McCormack, John McCowen, members of the Harvard Group for New Music, and DAD (T.J. Borden and Michael Matsuno). Madison is a doctoral candidate at UC San Diego, where she learns greatly from the mentorship of Anthony Burr and Charles Curtis. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music. Madison performed at ISSUE Project Room in December 2018 in support of, and alongside, Mary Margaret O'Hara as well as Artist-In-Residence John McCowen in 2020.