​It was this day last year that Suzanne Fiol, the kind, charismatic local presence who founded Issue Project Room in 2003, died, after a protracted battle with cancer. (Our tribute to her is here.) She was a lovely person whom we were lucky enough to know, a little bit, like so many other people who worked with her or ran into her at her space over the years. For today, one stray memory: standing outside Issue's old space along the Gowanus, halfway into the stellar month-long Independents Festival Fiol curated in January, 2007. "I'm a little shocked at how successful this is," she said to me, as geeked out by her own proceedings as I was. "Fend for your own," her partner in that Independents Festival, Regina Greene, told me then, when I asked about the uncertain long term prospects of the space. "The only thing you can do about it is to grab onto your community and family, which is us." And Suzanne did.

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​It's been just over a month since the loss of Issue Project Room's Suzanne Fiol, who died of cancer on October 5th, at the age of 49. Next weekend, she'll receive a proper farewell. St. Ann's will host a memorial for Fiol on Sunday, November 15th, at 4pm. Following the service, at 7pm, there will a parade in her honor, with a symbolic route--out of St. Ann's, past 110 Livingston, Issue Project's dynamic future home, and ending at the (OA) Can Factory, where IPR is currently in residence, awaiting the future Fiol guaranteed the performance space before her death. At the Can Factory, Issue will host a memorial concert, starting at 8pm. The performers--as loved as Fiol was, there will be many--will not be announced in advance, the idea being Suzanne should be reason enough to show up. She was and is. Schedule, dates, and times, below:

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​It's not a memorial--that will come later, and in high style--but the Issue Project Room is holding a benefit tomorrow night for its future space at 110 Livingston Street. Honor Suzanne Fiol by attending. She helped put "Poetry to the Infinitive Power(s)" together and that's reason enough alone for IPR to see it through. Poets Bob Holman, Jonas Mekas, Anne Waldman, and many more will read; Brooklyn bulldozer trio These Are Powers, who filmed their newest video in the nascent Livingston space, will be on hand to debut the film and perform. Then the DJs take over. Take the opportunity to end what's been an awful week by celebrating the woman and the space. Suzanne will be present in all kinds of ways.

Further info can be found here.

​Suzanne Fiol, who founded the itinerant new-music venue Issue Project Room in an East Village garage in 2003 and who shepherded the venue through three successive spaces, died yesterday, after a long struggle with cancer. In this paper's archives you will find any number of raptures about the sheer creativity of the spaces she turned into venues--an oil silo on the Gowanus; the Old American Can Factory; and a magnificently crumbling theater at 110 Livingston, which when it opens in 2010 or 2011 will be the Carnegie Hall of experimental music in New York--and as many bemused descriptions of Fiol herself. She was charming. The first night I met her, at the Gowanus space in January of 2007, we drank water and red wine out of plastic cups and talked about the Baltimore noise duo Nautical Almanac. She was 46, curly-haired, stylish, and striking.

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