One night during Rhys Chatham’s 2006 American tour — a rare visit for an expatriate composer who has been living in France since the 1990s — he was playing a Cleveland rock club with an ensemble of guitarists. It’s what Mr. Chatham, 54, has been doing since the mid-1970s, when the former student of LaMonte Young and Morton Subotnick happened to see the Ramones at CBGB. Inspired by punk rock’s feverish energy, he decided to supercharge his minimalist compositions by writing for electric guitars — as many as he could fit onstage.

“Guitar Trio,” an eight-minute piece of music that made its premiere in 1977, was the start of something new. And on this night in Ohio, it still sounded so. The piece was reinvigorated by a group of young musicians Mr. Chatham had recruited for a venture into heavy metal — a form with which his drone-happy sound has much in common — and as they launched into an encore of the work, one fan lost his mind.

“Some drunk dude started yelling, ‘Guitar Trio’ is my life!'” the guitarist David Daniell, recalling the moment with a laugh, said. “And it sort of became our motto.”

Ever the populist, Mr. Chatham and his roving guitar armies are back on the road, touring a special 30th anniversary version of “Guitar Trio.” The group will play Saturday at the Issue Project Room in Brooklyn as part of a month-long celebration of independent record labels devoted to art music in all its hothouse varieties.

This week’s series features artists from the Table of the Elements label, which has been reissuing Mr. Chatham’s classic 1970s and ’80s material, and recording new projects such as the Essentialist, which adapts the composer’s ecstatic chiming overtones to the influence of “stoner doom” metal acts such as Earth and Sleep.

“When you stumble onto something truly magical, you don’t let it go,” Mr. Chatham said, reflecting on his choice to revisit “Guitar Trio,” which will be recorded live at each of the tour’s dozen dates for a future “best of G3” boxed set. “Perhaps it has to do with the universality of the overtones we are working with, the way their eternal quality speaks to just about everyone, combined with a driving rock rhythm, which also has a certain universality to it.”

To prove that point, Mr. Chatham is working with a different lineup of musicians in each city, dubbing the band “The Guitar Trio All-Stars.” In Brooklyn, those players will include threefourths of Sonic Youth (guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo were weaned as members of the composer’s massed-string combos). The artist Robert Longo, also one of Mr. Chatham’s original guitarists, will be there as well. Other concerts will feature local heroes, such as former Husker Du bassist Greg Norton (Minneapolis) and assorted members of the post-rock group Tortoise (Chicago). It’s a system that has worked marvelously with far more ambitious projects, such as Mr. Chatham’s orchestral scores for 100 or 400 guitarists, which entailed something like a Craig’s List approach to securing onetime band members.

“I thought it might be fun to try it with ‘Guitar Trio,'” Mr. Chatham said, emphasizing the loose concept of a “trio” that swells to as many as a dozen performers.

“It’s so simple structurally,” Mr. Daniell, who is the only guitarist accompanying Mr. Chatham for the entire tour, said. He noted that two new versions of “G3” (as everyone now calls it) will extend the length of the original to 40 minutes from eight.

“It’s one chord. But from that one chord so much happens. You take a very simple, coherent idea and push it to an extreme, where you realize that this simple idea is not so simple, after all. It’s one chord, and it’s huge.”

Joking around last weekend at the Issue Project Room, a renovated oil silo on the Gowanus Canal, Mr. Daniell reacted to news that some first-time performers had requested a notated score of the piece. “Here’s your sheet music,” he said. “It’s the letter E.”

Mr. Chatham, who had dropped off the radar for a long stretch, is reveling in his current status as sonic guru. Underground metal bands like Sunn O))) namedrop him in their interviews; he maintains a fully loaded MySpace profile, with comic video clips and preview tracks from works-inprogress; and he’s cultivating a whole new circle of young guitarists, much as he did 30 years ago.

“You definitely feel a connection to him and the group,” Sarah Lipstate, who recently moved to New York from Texas, where she co-founded the experimental rock band One Umbrella, said. Ms. Lipstate has played in a “Guitar Trio” lineup once, so far, and will be on call Saturday should someone fail to make the gig. The audience should be prepared for one of Mr. Chatham’s minimalist jokes.

“I don’t think people understand we are playing the same piece twice,” she said. “I remember we finished the first version, and Rhys asked the audience if they wanted to hear another one. And then we played the exact same thing again!”

Ms. Lipstate considered this for a few seconds. Then she had a second thought.

“You know, with the interaction between the players, and the harmonics, and all the craziness going on, I guess it was a different piece.”

January 27 (Issue Project Room, 400 Carroll St., between Bond and Nevins streets, 718-330-0313).