Brooklyn, NY: Roulette, celebrating over 35 years of presenting new and experimental performance, announces its exciting 2014 Winter/Spring season which kicks off January 6 with the highly acclaimed pianist Kris Davis who will present her large ensemble project “Infrasound”.
In April, Roulette will host the 2014 Tri-Centric Music Festival, featuring several performances of Braxtons work and a multi-media concert performance of Braxton's latest four-act opera, featuring a cast of 12 vocalists, 12 instrumental soloists, and full orchestra.
Other Highlights included Matt Shipp, solo piano on January 30th, DanceRoulette, February 10 - 13, Ray Anderson, February 23, Elliott Sharp: SysOrk, March 13 and a rare performance by Jen Shyu on May 29. Roulette also welcomes back the Ear Heart Music Series and the Interpretations Series.
Winter/Spring Schedule of Events:
January 6, 2014, 8pm
Kris Davis’s Infrasound – “a living, breathing animal”
Pianist-Composer Kris Davis Unveils Her Large-Ensemble Project Infrasound, featuring Ben, Goldberg, Oscar Noriega, Andrew Bishop & Joachim Badenhorst on bass clarinets, plus a rhythm section of Nate Radley, Gary Versace & Jim Black
January 11 - 13, 2014, 8pm
Visitations: Theotokia and The War Reporter, Jonathan Berger & Dan O’Brien
Gradual and insidious, auditory hallucinations warp minds with “loud thoughts,” that often deceive, derange, and force sufferers into a world of crippling paranoia. Visitations, the New York premiere of the double-bill, semi-staged multi-media concert of one-act chamber operas by composer Jonathan Berger and librettist Dan O’Brien unravels the phenomenon. In Theotokia, penetrate the consciousness of a man who, assailed by hallucinatory voices, is taunted and seduced by the mother of God. Uncover the true story of Pulitzer Prize-winning combat journalist Paul Watson in The War Reporter, where he seeks to stifle the haunting voice of an American soldier whose corpse he photographed in the streets of Mogadishu.
January 15, 2014, 8pm
Ear Heart Music Series - Del Sol String Quartet – Peradam
San Francisco’s intrepid Del Sol String Quartet returns to Ear Heart Music with Peradam, an object that is revealed only to those who seek it. Del Sol searches for truth through the sonic aesthetics and emotions of Cambodia, Estonia, throat-singing and the night club. The program features the New York premiere of Mason Bates’ Bagatelles for String Quartet and Electronica (2012) as well as works by Lembit Beecher, Peradam (2012) by Ken Ueno, and Chinary Ung.
January 20, 2014, 8pm
Brett Sroka - Sine Qua Non // Featuring Carl Maguire
Live performance transforms into an interactive, immersive sound installation in the premiere of Sine Qua Non by composer and Brett Sroka. Developed in part at Alfred University’s Institute of Electronic Arts and the Vilnius Academy of Art, Nida Art Colony in Lithuania, Sroka is joined by pianist Carl Maguire whose live performance is sampled and processed by a special Max/MSP patch in an improvisational dialogue between performance and abstract processing, the acoustic and electronic, the transient and the essential (Sine Qua Non, i.e., without which there is nothing). As the live interaction between the two musicians develops, the sampled fragments slowly take over through generative processing, and Roulette’s performance space becomes the site of an ever-changing, multi-channel sound installation and offers each listener a unique immersive sonic experience based on spatial position and engagement with the emergent new work.
January 22, 2014, 8pm
The Fay Victor Ensemble Presents Selections from “Absinthe & Vermouth”
Started in 2005 as a voice-guitar-bass-drum unit The Fay Victor Ensemble (FVE) performs original material written by vocalist/composer Fay Victor and bass guitarist/composer Jochem van Dijk with music geared towards improvisation emerging from all sorts of song forms, revealing an expansive and cohesive mix of jazz, rock, blues and new music vibrations. Featuring Fay Victor - voice, compositions, Anders Nilsson - electric guitar, effects and Ken Filiano - double bass, effects.
January 27, 2014, 8pm
Viktor Ullmann: Sonatas & Stories
A collaboration: Jeanne Golan, pianist with actor David Garrison
For World Holocaust Remembrance Day, Roulette presents an evening of solo and collaborative works by Viktor Ullmann, a composer who perished at Auschwitz and was dedicated to the advancement of new music in his time.
January 29, 2014, 8pm
Tone Road Ramblers
Stretching out across the wide landscape between the paths of the classical avant-garde and free improvisation, the Tone Road Ramblers have been taking a wild ride across on their own road of experimentation for over thirty years. Each Rambler – a virtuoso technician of his instrument of the highest order – contributes his idiosyncratic approach to extended techniques, microtonality, and draws from influences and interests in diverse musical traditions. The Tone Road Ramblers are Ron Coulter, John Fonville, Eric Mandat, Morgan Powell, Ray Sasaki, and Jim Staley.
January 30, 2014, 8pm
Matt Shipp - Solo Piano / The Piano Sutras Project
Matt Shipp, one of the leading lights of a new generation of jazz giants, presents an on going series of solo piano improvisations that take off where piano sutras started The pieces are open ended, allowing Shipp to generate in the future as an ongoing continuum of music
February 4, 2014, 8pm
Connie Crothers Quartet
February 7 & 8, 2014, 8pm
Mixology Series
Roulette's 2014 Mixology Festival surveys the unique and exciting ways that emerging electronic and digital technologies are being used to make music today. Performances include Pete Swanson, Outer Space (John Elliott of Emeralds) and more with presentations and workshops by Brian Crabtree and Ezra Buchla on Monome's Aleph Soundcomputer and Peter Blasser on his instrument "The Shnth" and its programming front end "Fish." An electronic music festival of live performances by intriguing practitioners of electronic music today and demonstrations of cutting-edge technology, Mixology Festival is also forum to exchange and discover new music, and a pop-up record fair of local electronic music imprints will grace Roulette's lobby for the duration of this exciting two-day festival.
February 10 - 14, 2014, 8pm
DanceRoulette
Curated by Jennifer Lafferty
Monday 2/10: Andrew Schneider, Renee Archibald, Heather Lang
Tuesday 2/11: Tara O’Con, Stacy Grossfield, Dylan Crossman
Wednesday 2/12: Emily Wexler, Mariana Valencia
Thursday 2/13: Marilyn Maywald, Maggie Bennett, Benjamin Kimitch
Friday 2/14: Jessica Ray, Niall Jones, Heather Olson
February 17, 2014, 8pm
Neil Rolnick: Dynamic RAM & Concert Grand
Featuring Vicky Chow, Kathleen Supové and Bob Gluck, pianos
Since 2005 Neil Rolnick has written three large scale works for piano and computer. This evening’s concert will feature the world premiere of the third of these pieces, Dynamic RAM & Concert Grand, commissioned by the Fromm Foundation for Bang On A Can All-Stars pianist Vicky Chow. It will also include the previous two works, each played by the pianist who commissioned it. Kathleen Supove will play Digits (2005) and Bob Gluck will play Faith (2009). Rolnick will perform the computer part for all three pieces.
February 18, 2014
Ear Heart Music Series - Aeolus Quartet – Appalachian Portraits
Praised by Strad Magazine for their “high-octane” performance, the Aeolus Quartet has been snatching up prize after prize for their powerful and insightful playing. This program features the newly appointed Juilliard graduate resident string quartet performing selections from their highly acclaimed CD Many Sided Music. Capturing an irresistible and bittersweet Americana flavor, Aeolus will perform Steven Snowden‘s Appalachian Poloroids alongside premiere projections of the controversial portrait photography of Guggenheim Fellow Shelly Lee Adams.
February 20, 2014, 8pm
Interpretations Series
Joan La Barbara // Bruce Gremo
February 23, 2014, 8pm
Ray Anderson & Sarah Weaver: The Point Being
Ray Anderson, Art Baron, Craig Harris, Earl McIntyre: Slideride
The first set will be the premiere of “The Point Being,” a new, large-ensemble piece co-composed with Sarah Weaver. This hour-long piece explores the metaphorical, existential, humorous, and multidimensional concepts of the title. The point being that being is the point!
The second set will feature the group Slideride, a cooperative trombone quartet first formed in the early 1990’s by Craig Harris and Ray Anderson, now enjoying a new incarnation featuring Art Baron and Earl McIntyre. Slideride utilizes the sounds and rhythms of trombone shout bands, New Orleans brass bands, classic American big bands such as Basie, Ellington, and Sun Ra, avant-garde extended techniques such as those required by Berio and others to create a unique music, powerful in its message and broad in its scope.
February 24, 2014, 8pm
Jason Robinson's Janus Ensemble
Tiresian Symmetry and Beyond – Winter Tour 2014
Saxophonist and composer Jason Robinson’s celebrated, unusual nine-piece Janus Ensemble embarks on a five-concert tour of the US Northeast and Canada in February 2014. The tour, titled “Tiresian Symmetry & Beyond,” will feature re-worked pieces culled from Tiresian Symmetry, the group’s acclaimed 2012 album on Cuneiform Records, as well as the DEBUT OF “RESONANT GEOGRAPHIES,” a new suite of Robinson compositions for the Janus Ensemble. The first three pieces from the suite will be performed at each concert: “Outcropping (Salt Point, 1995),” “Futures Unimagined (Quabbin Reservoir, 2012),” and “Confluence (Virgin Creek, 1996)”—each acting as a meditation on the relationship between geography and personal history, structure and expression.
March 2, 2014, 8pm
Cloud Becomes Your Hand
CBYH is a Brooklyn based avant-rock five-piece here to rearrange brain patterns with splashy sonic wonderment. Born as the bedroom recording project of Stephen Cooper in 2010, the music released on the first two tapes features a meticulously orchestrated synthesis of psychedelic prog-pop with bubbling electronic manipulation. Comprised of guitar, vocals, drums, synthesizer, violin and MIDI marimba, CBYH wields layered synthesizers and dense rhythmic composition to create unusual song structures; at times recalling the likes of Henry Cow, The Residents and Andre Popp.
March 3, 2014, 8pm
Shayna Dulberger
4, 2014, 8pm
David First’s The Western Enisphere meets The Ashcan Orchestra
David First and Pat Spadine combine forces to present an evening of immersive sonic cooperation and porous media interaction that will utilize the full extent of Roulette’s technical capabilities as well as the entirety of its physical space. Both groups will present self-contained works from their unique repertoires as well as premiere a collaboration by First and Spadine for their combined ensembles, created especially for the occasion.
March 6, 2014, 8pm
Darius Jones Presents The Elizabeth-Caroline Unit / The Over-Soul Manual (Jerome Residency)
Darius Jones presents the Elizabeth-Caroline Unit performing his large vocal work ‘The Over-Soul Manual’ for a capella voice. The Elizabeth-Caroline Unit is a set of four female vocalists: Amirtha Kidambi, Sarah Dyson, Kristin Slipp, and Jean-Carla Rodea.
The ‘Over-Soul Manual’ is a collection of etudes written for the vocal quartet, Elizabeth-Caroline Unit. The etudes are vehicles to teach each vocalist the linguistic and sonic vocabulary of an alien birthing ritual. In this alien culture, having a child is done with the spiritual agreement of three or more humanoids.
March 10, 2014, 8pm
Shoko Nagai’s tAKE’N sHADOW (Kagefum)
Feat: Shoko Nagai (Compositions/Piano/ Moog), Todd Reynolds (Violin), Jonathan Goldbeger (Guitar/ effects), Stomu Takeishi (Electric bass), Michelle Handelman(Video Projections)
New York based composer/pianist Shoko Nagai's new project, "tAKE'N sHADOW" explores the essence of contemporary music. With the elements of the contemporary western music, experimental electronic music and improvisations, her compositions use multiple textures creating an open sense of time evokes another realm of time and place and aold tale.
March 11, 2014, 8pm
Ear Heart Music Series - Aventa Ensemble – Strange News
Victoria’s unstoppable Aventa Ensemble is back in its most ambitious New York program to date, featuring the New York premiere of Rolf Wallin‘s multimedia commentary on child soldiers, Strange News. Wallin and Ugandan actor Arthur Kisenyi join Aventa in the presentation of this work which includes video, live electronics, surround sound, and the participation of local media. The Birmingham Post called the piece an “awe-inspiring… compassionate and totally involving creation… a War Requiem for the modern day, one which held the audience stunned – until the standing ovation at the end.” The US premiere of Michael Osterle‘s Le Contrat Social balances the program.
March 12 & 13, 2014, 8pm
Elliott Sharp: SysOrk
NYC debut of SysOrk. Includes the world premiere of Idols Of The Mind and a performance of Flexagons. Feat: Andrew Drury - percussion, Terry Greene - trombone, James Ilgenfritz - bass, Judith Insell - viola, Ron Lawrence - viola, Tim Leopold - trumpet, Jenny Lin - piano, Chris McIntyre - trombone, Oscar Noriega - reeds, Jessica Pavone- viola, Reuben Radding - bass Danny Tunick - percussion, E# - electroacoustic guitar, bass clarinet, conducting
March 20, 2014, 8pm
Interpretations Series
Thomas Buckner with Bradyworks
March 21, 2014, 8pm
Skeletons (Jerome Residency)
Skeletons, the American entertainment unit led by composer/musicians Matt Mehlan and Jason McMahon, perform material from their new and yet to be released album - recorded in the Summer of 2013 via Roulette's Jerome Foundation residency program. The album features new and re-worked orchestral arrangements (some based on Matt’s recent work with the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra), electronic explorations, and collaborative experiments with a band culled from New York's best, featuring drummers Greg Fox (Guardian Alien, Zs, formerly Liturgy) and Mike Pride (Bacteria to Boys, Drummer's Corpse), bassist Justin Frye (PC Worship), saxophonists Matt Nelson (tUnE-yArDs, Arts and Sciences) and Nathaniel Morgan (Buckminster), trombonist Sam Kulik (Starring, Talibam!), pianist Mike Gallope (Janka Nabay, Starring), percussionist Sam Sowyrda (Cloud Becomes Your Hand, Dan Deacon Ensemble), and violinist Caley Monahan-Ward (Extra Life).
March 24, 2014, 8pm
Matt McBane – An Evening of Composer-led Bands: Build, itsnotyouitsme, Emyprean Atlas, and special guest TBA
March 25, 2014, 8pm
Huebner & Mandel premiere Gosfield, Haber, Hoffman & Waller - plus masterworks by Feldman & Bryars
FLUX Quartet violist Max Mandel and New York Philharmonic pianist Eric Huebner join forces to give a recital of premieres by New York's avant-garde composers Annie Gosfield, Yotam Haber, Elizabeth Hoffman and Michael Vincent Waller. Combined with masterpieces by Gavin Bryars and Morton Feldman, the duo devotes this evening at Roulette to their obsession with new works that expand the emotional and intellectual range of chamber music for viola and piano.
March 27, 2014, 8pm
ISSUE Project Room & Roulette Present String Orchestra of Brooklyn & - String Theories
March 28 & 29, 2014, 8pm
THE MUSIC OF ALVIN LUCIER with the Callithumpian Consort, Charles Curtis & Stephen Drury
The Callithumpian Consort, cellist Charles Curtis and pianist Stephen Drury celebrate the unique musical vision of the pioneering composer Alvin Lucier in two evenings devoted to his music, placing it in an international context. The programs include two New York premieres, Lucier’s voluptuous and luxurious BRAID and Tristan Murail’s tragic, visionary LACHRYMAE, both written for the Callithumpian Consort.
March 28 - Braid (NY premiere), Fideliotrio (vla, vc, pno), Two Circles (flute, violin, clarinet, cello, piano), Slices (cello and recorded orchestra)
and Christian Wolff: Microexercises, Tristan Murail: LACHRYMAE (NY premiere)
March 29 - Charles Curtis (cello, pure waves) (2002), Twonings (cello, piano);, Still Lives (piano) and Morton Feldman: Extensions 3
March 30, 2014, 8pm
Daniel Levin Quartet
Cellist Daniel Levin’s drummerless quartet occupies a musical space bordered by many kinds of music, but fully defined by none of them. Elements of European classical music, American jazz, microtonal and new music, and European free improvisation all figure prominently in the band’s unique sound. But as critic Chris May observes in All About Jazz, “Like all the most successful post-modern creative ventures, Levin’s quartet positions its antecedents in plain sight, but rises above them to create something novel, fascinating and unmistakably of its own time.” Levin and his quartet with trumpeter Nate Wooley, vibraphonist Matt Moran, and bassist Peter Bitenc, is “a provocatively assembled group of adventurous musicians,” that makes music with “the wild chaos of nature somehow centered in a sense of harmonious majesty,” according to critic Donald Elfman.
April 2, 3 & 4, 2014, 8pm
Composer/Choreographer Series
April 8, 2014, 8pm
Gabrielle Herbst - BODILESS (Commissioned by Roulette and the Jerome Foundation)
A new opera commissioned by Roulette and the Jerome Foundation, featuring Contemporaneous www.contemporaneous.org with vocalists, Lucy Dhegrae, Ariadne Greif and Gabrielle Herbst. Costumes by Zaida Adriana Goveo Balmaseda www.zagb.net. Elements of BODILESS originated as a ten-minute “opera short” performed with Hotel Elefant and presented by Experiments in Opera and Issue Project Room in February, 2013.
April 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 2014, 8pm
2014 Tri-Centric Music Festival
April 10-12, 2014: The Tri-Centric Presenting Series
The music of Anthony Braxton, including Composition No. 46 (for chamber ensemble), Composition No. 146 (for 12 flutes, 2 tubas, and percussion), and Braxton's Falling River Music Nonet, presented alongside new projects by James Fei, Nate Wooley, and Fay Victor.
April 17-19, 2014: Anthony Braxton's Trillium J (The Non-Unconfessionables)
A semi-staged, multi-media concert performance of Braxton's latest four-act opera, featuring a cast of 12 vocalists, 12 instrumental soloists, and full orchestra.
April 22, 2014, 8pm
Ear Heart Music Series
American Opera Projects and the American Modern Ensemble with Hai-Ting Chinn
This performance features two world premieres in a pairing of provocative chamber opera dealing with the duality and interconnectedness of spirituality and sexuality: Wanton Sublime by Tarik O’Regan, and The Companion by Robert Paterson. The “comprehensive and nuanced” (culturebot) Mallory Catlett directs.
April 24, 2014, 8pm
Interpretations Series
Tom Hamilton / Ned Rothenberg’s Inner Diaspora
April 27, 2014, 8pm
Ron Kuivila
Kuivila gives concerts and makes installations with electronic instruments of his own design. He regards installations and performance as complementary presentations that highlight different facets of those instruments.
April 30, 2014, 8pm
Laetitia Sonami - Solo and Duet
Sonami performs Eliane Radigue's OCCAM IX, the duo with James Fei Sparrows & Orotolans and a solo piece Birds Without Wings Cannot Fly
May 1, 2014, 8pm
Lainie Fefferman - Here I Am - featuring Newspeak and Va Vocals (Jerome Residency)
Lainie Fefferman's Here I Am, an oratorio in nine movements for three singers, clarinet, violin, cello, electric guitar, piano, percussion, and drum set, is a meditation on nine perplexing but often ignored portions portions of the Hebrew Bible. Power chords, dreamy minimalism, folk-ballads, and performance art are all deployed in turn to set the Jewish Publication Society's plain and literal translation of the Hebrew text. Each movement uses these disparate musical genres and vocal styles to invite the listener to consider biblical narratives in a fresh light. It was written for the specific sound and talents of Newspeak and Va Vocals (Martha Cluver, Mellissa Hughes, and Caroline Shaw).
May 4, 2014, 8pm
Kendra Shank Trio
Vocalist Kendra Shank combines jazz originals, standards, world music, French songs, folk/pop tunes, and open improvisation in an adventurous, genre-bending style that inspired Gary Giddins to call her "one of New York's most original performers." (Jazz Times).
May 6, 2014, 8pm
Ear Heart Music Series
Concert Black (members of Ethel, Dal Niente, Color Field Ensemble, Mivos) – Email Songs
May 8 & 9, 2014, 8pm
Foreign Experiences: An Opera by Robert Ashley // Featuring Sam Ashley & Jacqueline Humbert
A New York Premier, Foreign Experiences is the second of Robert Ashley's quartet of short operas, with the overall title Now Eleanor’s Idea, based on the notion of a sequence of events seen from four, different points of view. At the same time, each opera is an allegory, like Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, for an individual's self-realization within the context of a major religion found in the United States. Improvement takes its imagery and plot from Judaism, Foreign Experiences from Pentecostal Evangelism, eL/Aficionado from Corporate Mysticism, and Now Eleanor's Idea from (Spanish) Catholicism.
May 12, 2014, 8pm
G Lucas Crane – Trance/Door/Trap/Door (Jerome Commission)
G Lucas Crane, one of the members of performance space Silent Barn, is a Brooklyn based sound artist and performer. working within the mediums of the manipulated analogue cassette, live collage, noise, environment/life recording and pure frenzy. Many years recording and playing his sonic diary, put to tape and hacked to pieces live, have yielded collaborations such as the psychedelic rock band Woods, Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice and Time Life, theater work at Ps122.
May 21, 2014, 8pm
Guy Barash
Guy Barash is a composer of modern music. Among his compositions are symphonic, chamber, vocal and electroacoustic works. He has written an extensive body of work that incorporates text in various settings and arrangements. As a humanistic artist with a great social consciousness, Guy writes for people. Whether for performers or audiences, he creates music that is challenging yet compelling.
May 23, 2014, 8pm
Angie Eng
May 29, 2014, 8pm
Jen Shyu, solo rites: Observing the Sounds and Cries of the World, directed by Garin Nugroho
Jen Shyu: Composition, vocals, dance, Taiwanese moon lute, piano, gayageum, er hu,
(Jerome Residency)
East Timorese lakadou Garin Nugroho: Direction, set design, video editing Sonic, visual, and visceral rites and reflections upon pilgrimage throughout Taiwan, East Timor, Indonesia (Java, Kalimantan), and South Korea. Using multiple tools of expression in multiple languages (new improvised languages as well as existing ones including Indonesian, Javanese, Taiwanese, indigenous Taiwanese languages, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Tetum, Korean), this solo performance—that of a woman living simultaneously in multiple cultures and “projecting her ancestry” (Val-Inc) through contemporary monologue—will reveal a personal journey of loss and redemption made universal, giving voice to the silenced. These losses reflect crises now plaguing these lands: the loss of voices found in traditional music and shaman rituals; the loss of habitat and wildlife and thus the linked ancient cosmology; and finally, the loss of public space, such as the submission of traditional markets and forests to malls and coal mines. These issues will be explored in performance through sound, movement, and fieldwork footage, creating a land-sound-scape which will serve to transport and transform both the performer and audience, leading to shared revelation and recovery from past sorrow.
June 9, 2014, 8pm
Adam Neely (Jerome Commission)
June 11 - 15, 2014
Vision Festival 2014
June 18, 19 & 20, 2014, 8pm
Elke Rindfleisch / Sarah Weber Gallo
Since 1999 Elke Rindfleisch has created a rigorous, critically acclaimed body of raw, highly physical and emotional works. At the root of her choreography lies the focus on investigating movement—researching its origins, its appearances and effects, and its emotional worth.
June 22, 2014, 8pm
Ear Heart Music Series
Momenta Quartet - Ghost Stories
June 23, 2014, 8pm
David Watson
June 25, 2014, 8pm
Marilyn Nonken + Collide-O-Scope Music
Marilyn Nonken is one of the most celebrated champions of the modern repertoire of her generation, known for performances that explore transcendent virtuosity and extremes of musical expression. Upon her 1993 New York debut, she was heralded as "a determined protector of important music" (New York Times). Recognized a "one of the greatest interpreters of new music" (American Record Guide), she has been named "Best of the Year" by some of the nation's leading critics.
June 26, 2014, 8pm
Nate Wooley Double Trio
Nate Wooley presents a new, expansive composition for double trio featuring Ron Miles on the other trumpet, Jozef Dumoulin (great Belgian fender rhodes/electronics), Cory Smythe, piano, Gerald Cleaver and Rudy Royston , drums.
Roulette – one of New York City’s premiere venues for experimental music for over 33 years - has reopened bigger and better than ever. Located in a newly renovated 1920s Art Deco concert hall in Downtown Brooklyn, the new Roulette features two levels of seating for up to 400 people (600 standing), an expanded multi-channel sound system, projection screen for film and multi-media events, state-of-the-art lighting system, modular stage, and a specially designed floor to accommodate dance. Teamed with bold new programming, the new Roulette promises to be one of the most exciting places in New York City - if not the country - to experience adventurous music and art.
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