Central to the new-music experience in New York.
– Time Out NY
Central to the new-music experience in New York.
– Time Out NY

Hello, America: Letters to Us, from Us
American Composers Orchestra
Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall | New York City, NY
3.11.2026 7:30PM
To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence as part of Carnegie Hall's United in Sound festival, we invite written and musical open letters to America, which reflect narratives around the summer homes of turn-of-the-century Black folk, Lakota Dream Kit symbology, unspoken emotions, rituals of celebration, and the writings of historic and current Black American women.
Karen Slack, soprano
Amanda Gookin, cello
Cynthia Yeh, percussion
Carolyn Kuan, conductor
SHELLEY WASHINGTON, Haymaker (World Premiere, ACO Commission, developed via EarShot CoLABoratory)
JOSEPH C. PHILLIPS JR., We Hold These Truths to Be Self-Evident (World Premiere, ACO Co-commission, developed via EarShot CoLABoratory)
BRITTANY J. GREEN, Letters to America (World Premiere, ACO Co-commission, developed via EarShot CoLABoratory)
KITE, Cosmologyscape for orchestra (World Premiere, ACO Commission, developed via EarShot CoLABoratory)
JESSIE MONTGOMERY, Procession for solo percussionist and orchestra (NY Premiere)

Lea Bertucci & Norbert Rodenkirchen / Chris McIntyre
Wed 15 Apr, 2026, 8pm
22 Boerum Place, Brooklyn 11201
IPR Event Page
ISSUE Project Room celebrates the 20th Anniversary of its Artists-In-Residence (AIR) program throughout 2026 with performances by current residents and returning alumni. This anniversary season highlights AIRs whose work reflects the ongoing evolution of a much broader community of experimental artists who have helped shape ISSUE for over twenty years.
Wednesday, April 15th, at 8pm, ISSUE presents The Days Pass Quickly Immersed in the Shadow of Eternity, a new composition for sampled and live early flutes in 8-channel sound by 2015 AIR Lea Bertucci. Written for master flutist, early music scholar, and member of the legendary early music group Sequentia, Norbert Rodenkirchen, this work reaches back through the spans of history and catapults ancient music into the present. Bertucci’s friend and colleague Chris McIntyre (2006 AIR) opens the evening. As recurring collaborators at ISSUE over many years, Bertucci and McIntyre have contributed to the organization’s programs in multiple capacities as both performers and curators.
Steeped in folkloric influences, The Days Pass Quickly is a haunting contemplation of time, duration and memory that evokes the primeval and futuristic simultaneously. It premiered in November 2025 at the ZKM in Karlsruhe Germany and was commissioned for their Gigahertz Prix. Crystalline, minimal and dissonant, pre-recorded sustained pitches and abstracted melodic fragments generated from five of Rodenkirchen’s flutes (Medieval Traverso, Swan Bone, Sheep Bone, Renaissance Tenor and Renaissance Bass) are sampled and deployed across an 8-channel speaker array. Rodenkirchen plays with minimal amplification, in effect expanding and contracting the instrument from its point of live origin to a diffused, spatialized sonic environment. The piece contemplates the depths of human history through the lens of our contemporary upheavals.
Almost exactly 20 years ago, Chris McIntyre presented a multi-channel sound work in ISSUE Project Room’s silo space on the Gowanus Canal. This was opening night of the ensemble Ne(x)tworks’ run as ISSUE’s first Artists-in-Residence. Two decades later, McIntyre returns to summon a fundament of sounds with trombone, voice, synthesizer, and ZOIA box, momentarily suspending and refracting time within the 22 Boerum Pl. theater. He notes: “ISSUE’s residency program afforded me the opportunity to expand my artistic research in a career-altering way. It is still offering me safe haven to try new things, to shine light on new growth in my creative rhizome.”

Either/Or at Miller Theater, Oct. 2013
Winner of the 2015 CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventuresome Programming, Either/Or is a flexible chamber ensemble based in New York City that presents a repertoire of new and recent chamber music informed equally by American Experimentalism and European avant-garde practice, with special emphasis on artists outside the institutional mainstream and on works exploring nontraditional ensemble formations. Directors Richard Carrick (conductor/piano) and David Shively (percussion/cimbalom) curate its programming, drawing on a broader collective of 17 regular soloists (and guests) to realize the unique requirements of each project. Since its founding in 2004, Either/Or has premiered more than 125 works (as well as dozens of student compositions), toured throughout the US and Sweden, and recorded for labels such as New Focus, New World Records, Starkland, and Sterling Classics.
Either/Or @ The Kitchen, New York, 27 April 2012
8th annual Spring Festival
Alex Waterman, cello; Chris McIntyre, trombone; Stephanie Griffin, viola; Margaret Lancaster, alto flute; Josh Rubin, bass clarinet; Richard Carrick, piano; David Shively, percussion
Elliott Sharp, electro-acoustic guitar