Issue Project Room

🏡 7/18 Matana Roberts / Ben Vida with Sara Magenheimer

ISSUE closes the summer season with the return of 2009 AIR Matana Roberts. Opening the evening, 2013 AIR Ben Vida () will perform music from his 2026 release, Oblivion Seekers with vocalist Sara Magenheimer ().

Roberts has maintained a longtime presence within ISSUE’s history, from early presentations of their Coin Coin cycle during their 2009 residency to community-oriented gatherings such as the LISTENING THROUGH THE FIRE town hall in 2025. For this appearance, Roberts returns in a live performance format, presenting solo work rooted in improvisation, sonic experimentation, and spontaneous composition.

Vida and Magenheimer present a live collaboration expanding on material from Vida’s newest release, Oblivion Seekers. Evoking novel confluences of music and speech, from Neil Tennant and the Pet Shop Boys’ spoken verses, to “the entire history of hip hop,” Vida gently and playfully breaks down language’s hierarchy of meaning and sound until they exist in egalitarian harmony.

Next Saturday, as part of ISSUE Project Room’s 20th AIR anniversary, James Ilgenfritz (), Joe McPhee ( ), and AC Diamond () share the stage for their first trio performance at the 22 Boerum Pl. theater.

Central to the work is Ilgenfritz’s interest in lexical entrainment, a phenomenon where speakers adopt the same terms and expressions used by their partners.

Supported by Anti-Social Music. Tickets at link in bio.

📹 slide 2 still by Jason Ponce from “The Ticket That Exploded: an Ongoing Opera” by 2011 AIR James Ilgenfritz. Filmed at the grain silo on the Gowanus Canal, October 29, 2011.

Friday, July 10th at 8pm, ISSUE presents “Spiriting Off,” a new solo work by 2026 Artist-In-Residence and luthier Webb Crawford () for electric guitar, tenor banjo, and five-string banjo. Free with RSVP!

Crawford notes, “Playing multiple instruments, or ‘doubling’, is a crucial aspect of musicianship: the transplantation of gestures and phrasing onto new intervals, shapes, timbres, and tonalities.”

At 6:30pm and 8:30pm on Wednesday, July 1st, Isabella Thorpe-Woods () presents 𝑬𝒏𝒗𝒆𝒍𝒐𝒑/𝒆, her second program as ISSUE’s 2026 Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow. Over the course of her fellowship, the artist will share a series of events that explore letters as a curatorial prompt, and the ways they both fail and succeed in transmitting meaning or reaching their desired destination.

𝑬𝒏𝒗𝒆𝒍𝒐𝒑/𝒆 brings together choreographers Jade Manns () and Ella Dawn W-S () for site-specific duets that navigate presence and absence, repetition and rupture, and the tension between inherited geometries and shifting landscapes. Here, dance unfolds at the site of de/construction.

🎟️ This program has limited capacity, and features two time slots for entry at 6:30pm and 8:30pm. No waitlist!

FREE WITH RSVP!

Saturday, June 27, 2026 AIR rocío sánchez presents their second commission, featuring Melissa Almaguer (tap dance and percussion) and Kenneth Jiménez (double bass). Together, the trio explores the elusive monarch’s migratory journey through sound and movement, with each instrument articulating distinct states of motion.

Drawing from close observation and sketching of monarch flight patterns, sánchez developed a score in which the sounds gradually emerge, echoing the increased activity of the butterflies in warmer weather. As rising spring temperatures prompt northward migration from wintering grounds in Mexico, the performance similarly expands in density and proximity: gestures gather, overlap, and eventually, recede.

📣 Just announced 📣

Wednesday, June 17th, ISSUE presents the premiere of three audiovisual compositions by 2010 AIR Matt Mottel ().

Mottel channels personal history into a layered, time-bending exploration of sound, image, and inheritance. Drawing on Syeus Mottel’s photography of 1960s–70s political and cultural movements, alongside the interdisciplinary practices of his “scene parents,” Yuko Otomo and Steve Dalachinsky, these works map an intergenerational network of influence that extends from downtown avant-garde histories to the present moment. This performance offers a convergence of artistic lineages that have shaped ISSUE from its earliest days, underscoring the residency program’s lasting impact.

📷 digtal still of ISSUE founder Suzanne Fiol’s artwork

📣 Just announced 📣

Saturday, June 13th, at 8pm, bassist and composer James Ilgenfritz (2011 AIR) returns to ISSUE, joined by Joe McPhee and AC Diamond for their first performance as a trio. Developed through years of individual collaborations, this event, supported by Antisocial Music, marks a new shared context for three artists deeply invested in improvisation as a mode of inquiry.

ISSUE Project Room is proud to participate in Bang on a Can’s () 2026 Long Play festival, with rare presentations and festival debuts from past ISSUE Artists-In-Residence, taking place at the 22 Boerum Pl. theater May 2-3. 🔗 Link to tickets and passes on our website.

Featuring performances by:






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