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Issue Project Room is 6 -- April (pre-move to Livingston St) benefit/birthday schedule w/ Moby, Hal Willner & more

by Andrew Frisicano

Moby

April 11th will be ISSUE Project Room‘s 6th anniversary. We’re amazed at how much has happened in this period of time. ISSUE started on East 6th street as an impromptu and spontaneous music, experimental cinema and performance venue…quickly gaining attention and expanding from 60 performances a year to over 250. By 2005, ISSUE had to leave the East Village and migrated to an iconic and beautiful silo along the banks of the Gowanus Canal. This unusual and extraordinarily fun location was voted “Best Art Bayou” by the Village Voice and named “New York’s Best Kept Secret” by the Whitney Museum.

Producing amazing performances by Rhys Chatham, Anthony Coleman, Marianne Amancher, Elliott Sharp, Jandek and WFMU’s own Kenny G, ISSUE Project Room enjoyed its stay at the silo immensely but then had to move once again. This time to its current location at the Old American Can Factory at 232 3rd Street in Brooklyn. This room, the “sanctuary”, was formerly a rehearsal studio for a circus troupe. Instead of trapeze artists, we’ve now got Stephan Moore’s 16 channel hemispherical speaker system hanging from the ceiling, enabling us to move sound over and around the heads of the audience.

This past year we found out that we were awarded a rent free, 20 year lease on the elk’s club room at the former Board of Education building at 110 Livingston Street. It’s a pretty amazing room and an amazing opportunity to build a kind of “Carnegie Hall of the Avant Garde” for the next 20 years. It’s up to us to bring it up to code and move in, though…so we’ll be fundraising for the time being…getting ready for the future. [ISSUE Project Room via Free Music Archive]

To celebrate (and raise money), the Brooklyn venue has lined up some special benefit performances for the month of April.

One highlight (of many) is Moby‘s “first-ever live electronic/ambiant performance” on Friday, April 24th. Tickets for the show are on sale now – regular and VIP. The full package includes: “an intimate pre-performance cocktail party with Moby [to] hear advance tracks from his forthcoming album, meet and talk with the artist, and enjoy a sneak-preview of his new music video directed by David Lynch.” Not surprisingly, Moby was one of many artists who recently appeared at Radio City Music Hall to help raise money for the David Lynch Foundation. Moby was also a part of the Issue Project Room fundraiser that took place at Santos Party House last year (that Tony Conrad also performed at).

On ISSUE Project Room’s actual birthday, April 11th, Pitre, with special guest avant-composer/filmmaker Tony Conrad, will perform original composition ED09 “with a 17-piece string/woodwind ensemble”. Tickets are on sale. ISSUE Project Room is where Tony teamed up with Genesis P-Orridge (of the reunited Throbbing Gristle) for two shows earlier this year. Video from one of those shows below.

The IPR schedule also has a Tuesday, April 21st show with producer and SNL music supervisor Hal Willner featuring Sean Lennon, Yuka Honda, Chloe Webb and special guests. Tickets to that are on sale. One of the albums Hal recently produced is the new Marianne Faithfull. Still waiting to hear if he’ll be back at Prospect Park this year.

Noveller/Sarah Lipstate (who is playing Cinema 16 at the Bell House on Sunday, April 19th) performs at the ISSUE Project Room on Saturday, April 25th as part of artist-in-residence Duane Pitre‘s Bowed Harmonic-Guitar Ensemble.

Some videos and the venue’s full April schedule, below…

Tony Conrad + Genesis Breyer P-Orridge 1/10/09 @ Issue Project Room

Graham Lambkin – Jason Lescalleet 5/24/08 @ Issue Project Room

ISSUE PROJECT ROOM, BROOKLYN, NY

Thursday 4/2
8pm
Elliott Sharp’s “Octal”
In addition to his composing and performance, Sharp has also been an instrument builder, inventor and conceptualist. In 2002, he began a collaboration with luthier Saul Koll to create an electroacoustic 8-string guitarbass which was completed in 2005. Since then, E# has been performing on the instrument, exploring its sounds and potentials. He has composed a suite of pieces, OCTAL (which was released on CD by the Clean Feed label based in Lisbon), that fully melds his huge personal vocabulary of extended techniques and unique compositional and improvisational strategies to the possibilities of this beautifully sculptured guitar.

Saturday 4/4
8pm
Andrea Belfi / David Grubbs / Stefano Pilia trio + Scott Haggart
Featured in various punk/hardcore bands and a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, Andrea Belfi is the co-founder of Rosolina Mar, an instrumental rock trio, as well as the backing band of the singer Larkin Grimm for her 2008 Italian tour. He’s one half of the duo Christa Pfangen, with which he released the album “Watch me getting back the end” (Die Schachtel 2008). He also collaborates with the super 8 film archives association Homemovies, on many audio/visual projects. Since 2003 Belfi has been developing a solo liveset, melding drumming techniques with the results of in-depth research with electroacustic devices and synthezisers.

David Grubbs has released ten full-length solo albums and appeared on more than 100 commercially-released recordings. In 2000, his album The Spectrum Between was named “Album of the Year” in the London Sunday Times. He was a founding member of the groups Gastr del Sol, Bastro, Squirrel Bait, and the Wingdale Community Singers, and has participated in the Red Krayola since 1993. He directs the Blue Chopsticks record label.

Scott Haggart’s performance will further expand his DISKONO 017 12″ record using a customized Califone Turntable and introduce/improvise preempted extracts of both analog-to-digital/digital-to-analog edits of DISKONO 017. The audience will also be provided an open-access broadcast quality turntable setup by default to play the said record backwards.

Wednesday 4/8
8pm
Bob Holman + Anne Waldman w Peter Gordon + Kit Fitzgerald
Bob Holman is best known as a free-wheeling impresario of new poetry: slams, hip-hop, performance. But he’s also written eight books, most recently A Couple of Ways of Doing Something, a collaboration with Chuck Close published by Aperture, teaches at NYU and Columbia, and is the Proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club.

Poet Anne Waldman has been an active member of the “Outrider” experimental poetry community for over 40 years as writer, sprechstimme performer, professor, editor, magpie scholar, infra-structure and cultural/political activist. She grew up on Macdougal Street in Greenwich Village where she still lives, and bi-furcated to Boulder, Colorado in 1974 when she co-founded The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics with Allen Ginsberg at Naropa University, the first Buddhist inspired school in the West, where she currently serves as Artistic Director of its celebrated Summer Writing program. She is the author of over 40 books of poetry including Kill or Cure, Marriage: A Sentence, Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble, and the poetic text: Outrider which includes an interview with Ernesto Cardenal, and essays on Lorine Niedecker and Charles Olson. Manatee/Humanity will be published by Penguin in 2009

Peter Gordon is a seminal figure in the New York music community. He first gained attention with his Love of Life Orchestra, which helped define the fusion of experimental composition with punk and jazz infused dance music. Gordon has worked some of the most influential artists and musicians of the past decades, including Laurie Anderson, Arthur Russell, Lawrence Weiner, Richard Foreman, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane, Flying Lizards, David Van Tieghem, Stephen Petronio, The Talking Band and Chuck Berry..

Kit Fitzgerald is a media artist and director working in video art, live performance, digital painting, and music video. Her works are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and have been presented in the Whitney Biennale, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave, the Hetmusiktheater (Amsterdam) and LaMama E.T.C. Ms. Fitzgerald has collaborated with composers Peter Gordon, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Max Roach; poet Seiku Sundiata and choreographers Donald Byrd, Bill T. Jones, and Bebe Miller. Her hi-definition video, Painted Melodies, won 1st prize at the Electronic Cinema Festival in Montreaux.

Thursday 4/9
8pm
Shahzad Ismaily
Shahzad Ismaily was born to Pakistani immigrant parents and grew up in a wholly bicultural household. While he holds a masters degree in biochemistry from Arizona State University, he is a largely self-taught composer and musician, having mastered the electric and double bass, guitar, banjo, accordion, flute, drums, various percussion instruments and various analog synthesizers and drum machines. Ismaily has recorded or performed with an incredibly diverse assemblage of musicians, including Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed, Tom Waits, Jolie Holland, Laura Veirs, Bonnie Prince Billy, Faun Fables, Secret Chiefs 3, John Zorn, Elysian Fields, Shelley Hirsch, Niobe, Will Oldham, Nels Cline, Mike Doughty (of Soul Coughing), Graham Haynes, David Krakauer, Billy Martin (of Medeski Martin and Wood), Carla Kihlstedt’s Two Foot Yard, the Tin Hat Trio, Raz Mesinai and Burnt Sugar. He has also composed regularly for dance and theater, including for Min Tanaka, the Frankfurt Ballet and the East River Commedia. Recently he composed the score for the critically acclaimed movie Frozen River, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. He was also an Artist in Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA in 2008. Currently based in New York , Ismaily has studied music extensively in Pakistan, India, Turkey, Mexico, Santiago, Japan, Indonesia, Morocco and Iceland.

Friday 4/10
8pm
Mark Stewart – Sublime & Ridiculous Noises for Traditional & Non-Traditional Soundmakers (& you)
Stewart will engage audience members, encouraging interactions with instruments that are made from humble materials, are easy to make and easy to play. The object will be to create engaging sounds that invite free thought and reward honest effort and do not inherit a “system of order”.

Saturday 4/11
8pm
ISSUE Project Room’s Artist in Residence: Duane Pitre with special guest, Tony Conrad
Duane Pitre (originally from New Orleans) is a Brooklyn-based, avant-garde composer and performer. His current works explore both chaos and discipline-and the relationship that exists between the two. Pitre primarily works with long-tones and utilizes alternate tuning schemes that focus on microtonally, enabling him to explore unaccustomed harmonic intervallic relationships.

Tony Conrad teaches on the media study faculty of SUNY at Buffalo. Over the last twenty years he has been especially active in video. His work with music composition and performance started while he was a mathematics student, after which he was associated with the founding of “minimal” music and “underground” film. Conrad performs his recent music regularly at festivals, clubs and new music venues in the US and Europe.

Sunday 4/12

4pm
An Afternoon with Aki Onda
Aki Onda, an electronic musician, composer, and photographer performs cassette music, followed by a discussion about his sound diary and relationship between music and memory. Moderated by Alan Licht.

8pm
Stephan Moore – CD Release Party: “To Build A Field”
With performances by Evidence, video artist RoseRose, and a special guest set!
Stephan Moore’s new CD, “To Bulid A Field” has been released on Pauline Oliveros’s Deep Listening Catalog. The CD collects six works Moore composed for choreographers, documenting his contributions to music for modern dance from 2002 to 2008.

To celebrate its release, Moore will be joined by two longtime collaborators: Scott Smallwood (the other half of the duo Evidence) and video artist RoseRose. They will perform a set of improvised pieces, including work from their newest project, “Losperus”, that will make use of ISSUE’s 15-channel Hemisphere speaker system. A set by special guest performers will close the evening.

Tuesday 4/14

8pm
Parasitic Fantasy Band
This New Zealand group creates live ephemeral expanded cinema and ecstatic 16mm/8mm film and sound performances. The evening will feature special guest Andrea Williams, a Brooklyn-based sound and installation artist.

Wednesday 4/15
8pm
Henry Grimes and Brandon Ross present Leo Lindberg
Master jazz musicians Henry Grimes and Brandin Ross will play with Leo Lindberg, a young new bassist discovered in Sweden. This performance marks Lindberg’s New York City debut.

Thursday 4/16

8pm
Kate Valk & Andrew Schneider
Kate Valk began working with The Wooster Group in 1979 and since then has co-composed and performed in all of the Group’s productions. Valk has also worked on and been featured in all of The Wooster Group’s radio, film, and video projects. Valk founded and directs The Wooster Group’s in-school partnership with Dr. Sun Yat Sen Middle School and the Summer Institute, a performance intensive for public high school students conducted at The Performing Garage every summer. Valk received an OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence, a BESSIE Award for her performance in TO YOU, THE BIRDIE! (PHÈDRE) and a Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts Individual Artist Award. This year Ms. Valk has been chosen as a mentor for The Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative.

Andrew Schneider is a multimedia designer and performer. He is the co-founder and Associate Artistic Director of the Chicago-based theatre company, bigpicturegroup. His performance work has been seen at P.S. 122, The Prelude Festival, The Conflux Festival, The Tank, and O’Reilly Media’s ETech. His multimedia work has been featured in Art Review, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, TimeOut NY, Make, SIGGRAPH, DorkbotNYC, Sony Tech Wonder Labs, the Telfair Art Museum, and at the Center Pompidou in Paris. His Solar Bikini has been featured in galleries internationally. His latest projects include Experimental Devices for Performance (.com) and Acting Stranger (.com). Andrew Holds a Masters Degree in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU. He is currently working with The Wooster Group and Fischerspooner.

Friday 4/17
8pm
Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris Conducts a Chorus of Poets and String Ensemble

Saturday 4/18
8pm
Charlotta Kotik
Charlotta Kotik, curator at the Brooklyn Museum since 1983, was born and raised in Brooklyn. She studied art history and archaeology on the undergraduate and graduate levels at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. She has worked at the Jewish Museum, the National Gallery, Prague’s National Institute for Preservation and Reconstruction of Architectural Landmarks, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

During her tenure at the Brooklyn Museum, Kotik has organized site-specific installations of works by Martin Puryear, Jenny Holzer, and Joseph Kosuth in the institution’s Grand Lobby. She also curated Louise Bourgeois: The Locus of Memory, Works 1982-1993, the widely acclaimed special exhibition that toured internationally after its debut at the Venice Biennale in 1993. As of 2006, Kotik is the John and Barbara Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum.

Sunday 4/19
8pm
Eugene Chadbourne
Eugene Chadbourne started out playing rock and roll guitar, but quickly grew bored with the form’s conventions. He started studying other genres, including blues, country, bluegrass, free jazz, and noise – eventually synthesizing all those heterogeneous influences into a unique style of his own. He was also influenced early on by the experimental stylings of Captain Beefheart and the Mothers of Invention.

Also known as the inventor of the “electric rake”, Chadbourne has worked with numerous artists including John Zorn, Fred Frith, Derek Bailey, Han Bennink, Carla Bley Band, Paul Lovens, Camper Van Beethoven, Jello Biafra, Aki Takase, Zu,and Jimmy Carl Black.

Tuesday 4/21
8pm
Hal Willner Presents Sean Lennon, Yuka Honda, Chloe Webb and Special Guests
Hal Willner is among the most eclectic and original producers in contemporary music, helming a series of wildly ambitious concept albums and live shows which tapped the talents of artists running the gamut from pop to jazz to the avant-garde. Federico Fellini, Debbie Harry, Tom Waits, Bono, Sting, Nick Cave, Bryan Ferry, Lou Reed, Lucinda Williams, Loudon Wainwright III, Richard Thompson, Gavin Friday, Ringo Starr, Sun Ra, Rufus Wainwright and Jimmy Scot are just a few of the artists he has worked with.

Wednesday 4/22
8pm
Edwin Torres + Sean Meehan + Anne Tardos + Barry Weisblat + Margarida Garcia
a n e v e n i n g o f s y n c o p a t e d s t a t i c
as sonic reference
as human interaction
as social exchange

Thursday 4/23
8pm
Rick Moody and Amy Denio
Acclaimed composer and musician Amy Denio and novelist/singer-songwriter Rick Moody trade spots reading and accompanying one another on a variety of experiments in text and music.

Seattle resident Amy Denio is a composer, singer, multi-instrumentalist, audio engineer, and international collaborator. She started her own label, Spoot Music, in 1986. Her main instruments are voice, accordion, saxophones, clarinet, electric guitar, and bass, and she makes field recordings. She has collaborated with musicians and artists from East and West Europe, Japan, India, and throughout North America, and has 35 CD releases. She has played concerts in N. America, Brazil, Argentina, Japan, Hong Kong, India, Taiwan, and throughout Europe. She composes sound tracks for theater, film and dance, and works with choreographers such as Pat Graney, Li Chiao-Ping, and Victoria Marks. In 1997 she received a Bessie Award for her work with David Dorfman Dance. Her music has been performed at the Venice Biennale in Italy, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall in New York, and The Ethical Society in Philadelphia.

Rick Moody has published four novels (including THE ICE STORM and THE DIVINERS), three collections of stories, and a memoir, THE BLACK VEIL. His work has been translated in over twenty languages. He sings and records with The Wingdale Community Singers, whose second a
lbum, SPIRIT DUPLICATOR, will be released in June 2009

Friday 4/24
8pm
Moby
In his first-ever live electronic/ambient show Moby will re-work some older tracks along with new electronic interpretations of songs from his new album, Wait For Me (Mute, 2009). The set will bring together a combination of new technologies (pro-tools, digital processing) and old (analog reverbsand synthesizers).

Moby has been making music since he was 9 years old. He started out playing classical guitar and then went on to play with seminal Connecticut hardcore punk group The Vatican Commandoes, when he was 13. He started dj’ing after leaving college, and was a fixture in the late 80’s New York house and hip-hop scenes.

He released his first single, ‘Go’ in 1991(listed as one of Rolling Stone’s best records of all time), and has been making albums ever since. His own records have sold over 20,000,000 copies worldwide, and he’s also produced and remixed scores of other artists, including David Bowie, Metallica, the Beastie Boys, and Public Enemy among others.

Saturday 4/25
8pm
ISSUE Project Room’s Artist in Residence: Duane Pitre

Wednesday 4/29
8pm
John Jesurun
John Jesurun, a winner of the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship in 1996, is widely acknowledged as one of the foremost innovators of avant-garde theater, creating virtuoso works that overlap media and language in surprising and unpredictable ways.

Over the years his company has featured: Steve Buscemi, Ethyl Eichelberger, the performance artist John Kelly, Black-Eyed Susan. George Osterman, David Cale, Michael Tighe, Rebecca Moore, Frank Maya, Mimi Goese, and choreographer Neil Greenberg, among others. Jesurun received an Obie in 1986 for “Deep Sleep.”

Thursday 4/30
8pm
Evan Lurie
One of the original members of seminal downtown New York group the Lounge Lizards from the early 1980s, Evan Lurie is known as a technically proficient, classically-trained pianist and occasional keyboardist. Although his brother, Lounge Lizards leader John Lurie, gained more noteriety in the music and indie film worlds, Evan Lurie has always been a talented composer and bandleader in his own right. His first solo album, Selling Water by the Side of the River was released in 1990, during a hiatus from the Lounge Lizards. The album, which showcases Lurie’s compositional skills, consists of classically-inflected chamber pieces featuring Alfredo Pedernera on bandoneon and Marc Ribot on guitar. His subsequent album from 1998, How I Spent My Vacation, consists of pieces Lurie wrote for low budget films, and includes performances by many of Lurie’s cohorts from the various incarnations of the Lounge Lizards.

ISSUE PROJECT ROOM
@The (OA) Can Factory
232 Third Street
Brooklyn, NY 11215