The ISSUE Project Room (often shortened to ISSUE) is a
music venue
A music venue is any location used for a concert or musical performance. Music venues range in size and location, from a small coffeehouse for folk music shows, an outdoor bandshell or bandstand or a concert hall to an indoor sports stadium. Ty ...
in
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
, New York, founded in 2003 by
Suzanne Fiol. Located in
110 Livingston Street in
Downtown Brooklyn
Downtown Brooklyn is the third largest central business district in New York City after Midtown Manhattan and Lower Manhattan), and is located in the northwestern section of the borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is known for its office and ...
, the venue supports a wide variety of contemporary performance, specializing in presenting
experimental
An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when ...
and
avant-garde music
Avant-garde music is music that is considered to be at the forefront of innovation in its field, with the term "avant-garde" implying a critique of existing aesthetic conventions, rejection of the status quo in favor of unique or original elemen ...
. ISSUE Project Room is an art and performance center, presenting projects by more than 200 emerging and established artists each year.
History and programming
ISSUE Project Room began in 2003 with a special concert curated by ISSUE's late founder
Suzanne Fiol and musician
Marc Ribot
Marc Ribot (;
born May 21, 1954) is an American guitarist and composer.
His work has touched on many styles, including no wave, free jazz, rock, and Cuban music. Ribot is also known for collaborating with other musicians, most notably Tom Wait ...
honoring the work of
Frantz Casseus
Frantz Casseus (14 December 1915 – 3 June 1993) was a Haitian-American guitarist and composer.
Born and raised in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, he spent most of his adult life in the United States where he immigrated in 1946 hoping to meet pia ...
, the father of Haitian Classical music. It started out in a garage space in the
East Village of
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
,
[ as a "project room" to feature experimental performances presented by Fiol's photography agency, Issue Management.][ Performances by ]Debbie Harry
Deborah Ann Harry (born Angela Trimble; July 1, 1945) is an American singer, songwriter and actress, best known as the lead vocalist of the band Blondie. Four of her songs with the band reached on the US charts between 1979 and 1981.
Born in ...
and the Jazz Passengers, Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp (born March 1, 1951) is an American contemporary classical composer, multi-instrumentalist, and performer.
A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City since the late 1970s, Sharp has released ...
, Anthony Coleman
Anthony Coleman (born August 30, 1955) is an avant-garde jazz pianist. During the 1980s and 1990s he worked with John Zorn on '' Cobra'', ''Kristallnacht'', ''The Big Gundown'', ''Archery'', and ''Spillane'' and helped push modern Jewish music in ...
and dozens of others soon followed. Responding to the needs of artists in the community, Suzanne committed herself to developing ISSUE into a year-round performance space where artists could present their most challenging new work.
By 2005, ISSUE was presenting 100 arts events annually featuring pioneering artists from all disciplines. It had outgrown its Lower East Side location, and moved to a unique space in Brooklyn: a two-story silo in the post-industrial margin of the Gowanus Canal
The Gowanus Canal (originally known as the Gowanus Creek) is a canal in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, on the westernmost portion of Long Island. Once a vital cargo transportation hub, the canal has seen decreasing use since the mid-20 ...
. At the Silo, ISSUE's programming expanded to include site-specific works that incorporated a custom-designed 16-channel hemispherical speaker system created by sound artist Stephan Moore. Success in the space, both critical and programmatic, was tremendous, but after two years its rent was doubled and ISSUE was forced to move on.
In 2007, ISSUE moved to the Old American Can Factory, where it continued to thrive — emerging as one of Brooklyn's leading cultural catalysts and bringing 10,000 people to the Gowanus area of Brooklyn each year.
By 2008, ISSUE was supporting new work by more than 200 innovative arts each year, and entered and won a competition for a twenty-year rent-free lease to the 4,800 sq. ft. theater located at 22 Boerum Place— on the ground floor of the historic Beaux-Arts McKim, Mead & White
McKim, Mead & White was an American architectural firm that came to define architectural practice, urbanism, and the ideals of the American Renaissance in fin de siècle New York. The firm's founding partners Charles Follen McKim (1847–1909), Wil ...
“ 110 Livingston Street” building in downtown Brooklyn
Downtown Brooklyn is the third largest central business district in New York City after Midtown Manhattan and Lower Manhattan), and is located in the northwestern section of the borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is known for its office and ...
,[ to create a "]Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhatta ...
for the avant-garde".[ This tremendous award was a strong recognition of the crucial role ISSUE will play in shaping the future of Brooklyn and maintaining New York City's status as a cultural leader.
Tragically, in late 2008, ISSUE's founder Suzanne Fiol was diagnosed with cancer. She lost her courageous battle in October 2009.][Sisario, Ben. Suzanne Fiol, Avant-Garde Impresario, Dies at 49. The New York Times, October 8, 2009 https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/arts/music/08fiol.html?scp=1&sq=suzanne%20fiol&st=cse]
From 2009-2010, committed to achieving the founder's vision of creating ISSUE into a permanent home for experimental arts culture, its board, staff, and the artist community continued to evolve and expand ISSUE's programming. New music premiered in June presented by Zach Layton and Nick Hallett including a performance of Anthony Braxton
Anthony Braxton (born June 4, 1945) is an American experimental composer, educator, music theorist, improviser and multi-instrumentalist who is best known for playing saxophones, particularly the alto. Braxton grew up on the South Side of Chica ...
's new opera ''Trillium E'', an evening of keyboard
Keyboard may refer to:
Text input
* Keyboard, part of a typewriter
* Computer keyboard
** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping
** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware
Music
* Musi ...
music including a rare performance of Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016) was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music.
She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center ...
's eight-handed piano piece "Gathering Together", and the New York City premiere of two works by French electro-acoustic pioneer Luc Ferrari
Luc Ferrari (February 5, 1929 – August 22, 2005) was a French composer of Italian heritage and a pioneer in musique concrète and electroacoustic music. He was a founding member of RTF's Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRMC), working alongsid ...
.Cecil Taylor
Cecil Percival Taylor (March 25, 1929April 5, 2018) was an American pianist and poet.
Taylor was classically trained and was one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an energetic, physical approach, resulting in complex ...
's first ever performance in his home-town of Brooklyn, a three-night series of Philip Glass
Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimal music, minimalism, being built up fr ...
in collaboration with Stephin Merritt
Stephin Raymond Merritt (born February 9, 1965) is an American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, best known as the songwriter and principal singer of the bands the Magnetic Fields, the Gothic Archies, and Future Bible Heroes. He is ...
, Laurie Anderson
Laurel Philips Anderson (born June 5, 1947), known as Laurie Anderson, is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician, and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and ...
, and Jon Gibson, Keiji Haino
Keiji Haino ( ''Haino Keiji''; born May 3, 1952) is a Japanese musician and singer-songwriter whose work has included rock, free improvisation, noise music, percussion, psychedelic music, minimalism and drone music. He has been active since the ...
performing solo and in a rare duo with Fushitsusha
Fushitsusha (不失者) is a Japanese rock band specialising in experimental and psychedelic rock genres. The band consists of electric guitarist and singer Keiji Haino, and a shifting cast of complementary musicians. The group released the majo ...
founding member Tamio Shiraishi
Tamio (written: 民生 or 民夫) is a masculine Japanese given name. Notable people with the name include:
*, Japanese writer
*, Japanese actor
*, Japanese voice actor
*, Japanese singer-songwriter
{{given name
Japanese masculine given names , and the PAN_ACT festival— which brought together over 30 artists in conjunction with the Berlin-based label PAN.
ISSUE completed its capital campaign in 2012 by raising over $4,000,000 to renovate its space into the last section, scheduled to begin in 2014.[Dollar, Steve. A New ISSUE Arises, Raising a New Issue in Downtown Brooklyn . The Wall Street Journal, December 21, 2011 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204791104577110904215037764]
References
External links
*
*
ISSUE Project Room on Tumblr
- official blog
{{Coord, 40, 41, 26.88, N, 73, 59, 22.38, W
2003 establishments in New York City
Culture of Brooklyn
Music venues in Brooklyn