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Raz Mesinai's music is a unique synthesis of modern composition, cinematic sensibility, freeform electronics and a contemporary take on ancient shamanic and trance traditions. Tonight Mesinai explores the human voice through a microscopic lens, premiering a new piece inspired by the enigmatic book "Seth Speaks," in which author Jane Roberts experiences a prolonged conversation with the disembodied spirit "Seth." Composed of scrupulously edited text from their conversations, Mesinai's work creates a tapestry of otherworldly communication. Featuring the versatile vocalists Jessika Kenney and Haleh Abghari.

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Cellists Michelle Kinney and Jacqueline Ferrier-Ultan have been exploring their collaboration together since 2002 when they discovered a personal and musical kinship that took on a life of its own as Jelloslave. Jacqueline-Ferrier-Ultan and Michelle Kinney use all 8 amplified strings to sing, squawk, scream, growl and purr their way through their eclectic repertoire. They each bring to the duo a varied experience with several of new music's most innovative composers and performers. Including (on the short list....) Henry Threadgill, Myra Melford, Lloyd Ultan, Brandon Ross, George Cartwright, Anthony Cox and Buth Morris. Jelloslave recently released a CD on the brand new internet label, Sugarfootmusic.com.

Special guests tonight include: VJ Neverwas on projections and guitar, and Michael Ferrier, sax.

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Electric Kulintang (Susie Ibarra & Roberto Rodriguez) presents a performance of new works entitled 7000 Mysteries. With acoustic and electronic soundscapes, Ibarra (acoustic and electric kulintang, percussion, compositions) and Rodriguez (electronics, claypot, cajon la peru, percussion) weave melodies and rhythms that evoke Filipino folkloric trances in several new sonic narratives. Ibarra's music is largely influenced by her work in avant-garde and experimental music. She currently performs solo works and with in groups with Jennifer Choi, Craig Taborn, Sylvie Couvoisier, Ikue Mori and Mark Dresser, among others. Rodriguez draws upon his influences across the board of traditional Cuban music to contemporary music in the genres of pop, rock, jazz, world music, avant-garde and classical. He has played with Rufus Wainwright, Joe Jackson, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, and Leo Wadada Smith, to name a motley few. He currently leads his septet, Septeto Rodriguez.

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Saxophonist/composer Matana Roberts presents CoinCoin:Installation 1, the first performance of her in-progress musical narrative, which explores the defining moments of one people's shared history using the traditions of jazz- and improvisation-inspired music. Through original compositions and various ensemble configurations, Roberts pulls together tales from 7 generations and 4 continents of her own colorful ancestral lore in order to paint a musical portrait of an extraordinary, yet classic African American history. With Hill Greene (bass), Jessica Pavone (viola), Daniel Levin (cello) and Mazz Swift (violin), Daniel Givens (laptop and slide projector). Commissioned by Roulette with support from the Jerome Foundation.

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Leslie Ross, bassoonist, improviser, composer and instrument-builder, has been creating and performing since the mid 80s. In her Roulette performance, she continues to explore the rich multi-phonics and micro-tonal possibilities of the bassoon (often with electronics or computer) along with her settings of formal scores where improvised material tests -- and where necessary, breaches -- the set boundaries. She will present several new forms as well as excerpts from her sporadically kept 'music journal' (3rd installment.)

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Composer/guitarist David First will present Rocking Pipeline Witness Apologies to Dennis - a new drone-field work dedicated to the memory of his teacher Dennis Sandole, featuring Peter Zummo (trombone,) "Blue" Gene Tyranny (harmonically-tuned keyboards,) Christopher McIntyre (trombone) and First (guitar/laptop.) This work will continue First's usual concerns with various species of acoustical and metaphysical phenomena as well as attempt to make amends for his oft-regretted irresponsibilities regarding his relationship with the legendary Sandole. The New York Times calls First "a fascinating artist with a singular technique," and the Village Voice, "a bizarre cross between Hendrix and La Monte Young."

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Composer/Sound Artist Jessica Feldman offers up a night full of new pieces made especially for Roulette, including a new intermedia piece for voice and video-camera-monitored-mouth, performed by soprano Beth Griffith. Feldman's work tends toward interactivity, frequently crosses through many artistic disciplines and often occurs in extremely public or extremely private spaces. Her pieces have been performed, installed and exhibited at art galleries, parks, city streets, tiny closets and concert halls. Recent venues in NYC include The Kitchen, the Flux Factory, the Tank and Danspace at St. Mark's Church. Her sounds activate the physicality of the space and the body and have been likened to "one of those Japanese fish that, if cooked right, is delicious. If cooked wrong, it kills you." (Neely Bruce.)

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Junichi and Megumi Matsuzaki will perform solos and as a duo. Junichi has been performing on his "Cyber Guitar," a table-top guitar prepared using "junk," for the past ten years. The instrument is prepared with tubes, a mouthpiece, bells, a thumb piano and various other toys. For this Roulette show, he performs on his new model, "Cyber Guitar 2," which retains all the junk and preparation of the original, but with better sound quality and more resonance. Megumi will play her sitar with pedal effects, making phrase loops, mixing up melody and noise and oscillating between acoustic and electric sounds.

Megumi & Junich Matsuzaki collaborate for the performance of their new evening length work commissioned by Roulette with support from the Jerome Foundation. Both hailing from Hiroshima, Megumi and Junich each bring their own distinct background and sensibility to their five-year long artistic partnership. Megumi is a painter, a noise musician, an installation artist and sitar player. Junich invented his "junk-prepared-guitar" in 1993 and started playing saxophone in 1995, collaborated frequently with artists from other disciplines and founded his own performance venue. Since moving to NYC, Megumi and Junich formed a trio, ana o keke, and have performed throughout the city at venues such as Issue Project Room, SubTonic, PS 122 and Chashama. http://www.joyfulsonicwash.com

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Bagpipe Extrapolations

Uncustomary perspectives on bagpipe sound with David Watson's unconventional approach to the traditional instrument in responsive dialogue with offbeat perspectives on the instrument itself and its player with Katherine Liberovskaya's multiple live camera JITTER/MAX/MSP set-up enabling her to mix and process the cameras' points of view with pre-recorded moving images in real time.

David Watson has "blown the bagpipes, microtonally skirling and droning, into the 21st century". His work on this instrument subverts conventional expectations, drawing on traditional sources but placing them in the outskirts of new music infinity. Performances range from delicious silence to a veritable 'wall of sound.'

Katherine Liberovskaya is a Canadian video & media artist, working predominantly in experimental video since the late eighties. In 2003 she began exploring live video mixing in improvisation with live new music/sound. Since, she has performed live video mixing at a variety of venues in NY, Montreal and Europe with a number of music/sound artists including: o.blaat, Toshio Kajiwara, Shelley Hirsch, Vortex, Anthony Coleman, Phill Niblock and Al Margolis (aka If Bwana) and many others.

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Ben Neill (mutantrumpet/electronics,) with John Conte (bass) & Jim Mussen (drums,) presents XIX, a concert of music and interactive video (in collaboration with artist Bill Jones) based on samples of 19th century music and art. Short fragments from works by Beethoven, Berlioz, Chopin and others are digitally expanded and reworked into new compositions for Neill's ensemble. As a composer, performer and inventor of the mutantrumpet, Neill has recorded seven CDs of his music and has collaborated with Page Hamilton, David Behrman, John Cale and Coil, among others.

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Accordionists/composers Guy Klucevsek & Alan Bern present a program that will include Bern's Deep Blue C and Sideways, two suites written for Eliza Miller Dance Company, and the premiere of selections from Guy Klucevsek's on-going musical day book, Notefalls. Othermusic.com says: "These two are at the absolute height of their profession "¦ Together, they sweep you up, carrying you on hard currents of sound."

Klucevsek has created a unique repertoire for accordion through his own composing and by commissioning over 50 works from composers such as John Zorn, Aaron Jay Kernis, Fred Frith, Alvin Lucier and Somei Satoh. He has performed his music internationally and throughout New York at Lincoln Center, the Bang on a Can Marathon, the Whitney Museum and Merkin Hall. He has also played with Laurie Anderson, Anthony Braxton, Bill Frisell, Fred Frith, the Kronos Quartet, Natalie Merchant and Pauline Oliveros. He has released 16 recordings as soloist/leader, including his latest solo CD, "The Well-Tampered Accordion," on Winter & Winter.
Berlin-based Alan Bern is a composer, pianist, accordionist and musical director, with a special interest in solo and group improvisation. He is the director of Brave Old World, an ensemble known internationally for pioneering New Jewish Music. The group's most recent CD, "Song of the Lodz Ghetto", on Winter & Winter, was named best classical CD of 2005 by Newsday and one of the "10 best classical/world CDs" by Billboard. Bern holds an M.A. in philosophy from Tufts University and is completing a D.M.A. in music composition from the Cincinnati Conservatory.

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Margaret Leng-Tan performs rarities by John Cage, Philip Glass, Somei Satoh, and Hans Otte.

Tonight¹s program includes Cage's recently discovered "score-painting", Chess Pieces (1944,) and Glass' Minimalist classic, How Now (c. 1968,) not heard in New York since Ms. Tan first revived the work in the early 90s. Also, selections from Otte's 4-volume set of piano miniatures, Stundenbuch (1991-98,) in Ms. Tan's arrangement for string piano and toy piano. Satoh's epic Litania (1973) and transcendental A Gate into the Stars (1982) round out the program. Tan is renowned for her performances of American and Asian music that transcend the piano's conventional boundaries. Hailed by The New Yorker as"the diva of avant-garde pianism", she has inspired many composers to create performer-specific works for her. One of the leading performers of John Cage's music, she is also the world's first professional toy pianist who has transformed a toy into a bona fide instrument with a bona fide repertoire heard in festivals around the world. In March 2006 Mode Records releases Ms. Tan's long-awaited recording of Cage's Sonatas and Interludes and the first recording of Chess Pieces. Check out: www.margaretlengtan.com

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"K2K"

Over some 30 years, the unpredictable composer/pianist Kirk Nurock has orchestrated for Dizzy Gillespie, Leonard Bernstein, and Meredith Monk, conducted live animals at Carnegie Hall, and innovated in duos with Theo Bleckmann and Jay Clayton. His prolific body of vocal works explore edgy terrains featuring settings of Dickinson and Joyce. This time he teams up with vocal improviser Kyoko Kitamura who has honed her craft as a sideperson with the likes of Reggie Workman and Steve Coleman. Sharing a penchant for risk and absurdity, Kirk and Kyoko present their music tonight as K2K... for the first time.

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Downbeat Magazine describes pianist Borah Bergman as "having the hands of an eccentric genius." As a teenager, Bergman saw the one- (left-) handed pianist Paul Wittgenstein perform, and he was inspired to develop his own left hand to make it the complete equal of his right in both strength and independence. Now completely ambidextrous, he improvises horn-like lines with both hands, sometimes crossed, in a contrapuntal and polyphonic, multi-layered dialogue that allows pieces to be turned upside down without loss of rhythmic intensity or aesthetic shape. For his Roulette appearance, Bergman will perform Dimensions in Direction, piano compositions and improvisations, which relate to the above description and which showcase his unique style of playing, which he calls "ambi-ideation."

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Composer and hyperpianist Denman Maroney presents works of the seventies, eighties, nineties and aughties (including some world and New York premieres) with his brand new group consisting of himself (hyperpiano), Ned Rothenberg (reeds), Reuben Radding (bass), and Michael Sarin (drums). Maroney's music is inspired by the sound of crickets and power tools (among other things) and by the music of John Cage, Ornette Coleman, Henry Cowell, Charles Ives, Olivier Messiaen, Thelonius Monk, Conlon Nancarrow and Karlheinz Stockhausen, among others. Maroney has made nineteen commercial recordings with everyone from Leroy Jenkins to Mark Dresser to Ned Rothenberg. He has received grants from: the NEA, ASCAP, New York State Council on the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Jerome Robbins Foundation, and Meet the Composer on several occasions. Cadence Magazine describes him as one of the most unique pianists to emerge in the '90s... Utilizing an extreme prepared piano technique and a unique rhythmic sensibility, both instrumentally and compositionally, he has become one of the most intriguing composer/performers around." Check out: www.pipeline.com/~denman

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"Piano Resonance/Room Resonance"

Connie Crothers, pianist, will improvise solo and duo with Ben Manley, electroacoustic improviser. The duo, through the expression of their respective instruments, will create ambient resonance in the performance space. The piano will be situated in the center of the room. Speakers will be arranged around the circumference of the room. Crothers, the visual, as well as the aural center, will converse spontaneously with Manley¹s continuously shifting, resonating ambient sound resulting in a dynamic musical environment, interspersed with solos throughout.

"A lioness on the keyboard," (Jazz Nu) Crothers has been an active member of the New York jazz scene for over forty years. She has performed at Carnegie Recital Hall, the Berlin Jazztage, the New Music America festival, the Vision Festival, the Village Vanguard and other such venues throughout the city. She has released recordings with the SteepleChase, Jazz Records, and New Artist labels, the last of which she co-founded with composer/percussionist Max Roach. Recently, her quartet with Richard Tabnik, Roger Mancuso and Sean Smith has been receiving rave reviews. In the January 2000 issue of Cadence, she was chosen for inclusion in the selection of the most important and influential musicians in the last twenty-five years.
Manley is a composer and experimenter known for his exploration of real-time interactions between diverse electroacoustic sources to make the most of the musical moment---to generate a dynamic environment from the natural variability of wind, amplified small vibrations, and resonant spaces. He has collaborated with Sean G. Meehan, Dan Evans Farkas, Jens Brand and others, and has appeared with Composers Inside Electronics at the Lincoln Center and with Essential Music and the Downtown Ensemble.

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Composer/pianist David Borden and Mother Mallard (Borden¹s all-synthesizer ensemble, consisting of Borden and keyboardist Blaise Bryski) are joined by avant-pianist Kathleen Supové for the premiere of Borden¹s new evening-length electroacoustic composition, Heaven-Kept Soul. The title Heaven-Kept Soul is an anagram derived from the name Kathleen Supové, for whom this piece was composed. Known for her boundary-breaking ways of dissolving the wall between performer and audience.

David Borden founded Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co. in 1969 with the generous support of Robert Moog. The group became the world's first synthesizer ensemble. As a composer, his work spans both worlds of "high and low" culture. Borden's music is available on the Cuneiform, New World Records, Lameduck and Arbiter labels. He recently retired after eighteen years as Director of the Digital Music Program at Cornell University. He has received commissions from Tafel Music, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, the Duo Cristofori and Daniel Goode, among others. With Mother Mallard, he has performed at a variety of venues ranging from the Barbican Centre in London, the Tivoli Concert Hall in Copenhagen to many of the downtown avant-garde concert spaces in New York City including The Kitchen, The Knitting Factory, the Intermedia Foundation, the Alternative Museum, the Dance Theater Workshop, Danceteria and the Paula Cooper Gallery. He has received grants from the Ford Foundation, the New York State Arts Council and Meet the Composer.

Supové is an award-winning pianist whose concert series, The Exploding Piano, incorporates performance art, staging, and collaboration with artists from other disciplines. She has received grants from Meet The Composer, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, the Greenwall Foundation, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, and American Composers Forum, among others and has appeared with The Philip Glass Ensemble, in the Bang On a Can Marathon, at Music at the Anthology, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Composers' Collaborative, Inc., and at many other venues, ranging from concert halls to theatrical spaces to clubs.

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Pianist, composer, singer and songwriter Robin Holcomb gives a rare solo performance of new and old music for piano and voice including selections from her upcoming Tzadik Oracle series release. Holcomb has performed extensively in North America, Europe, Australia and Asia as a solo artist
and the leader of various ensembles. Recent performances include appearances at Queen Elizabeth Hall (London), Carnegie Hall, The Verona Jazz Festival, The San Francisco Jazz Festival and the Hong Kong Arts Festival among others. She is a founder and co-director of The New York Composers Orchestra, an ensemble for which she is also a conductor, pianist and principal composer. The New York Times describes her style as a new American regionalism, spun from many threads - country, rock, minimalism, Civil War songs, Baptist hymns, Appalachian folk tunes, even the polytonal music of Charles Ives. The music that results is as elegantly simple as a Shaker Quilt, and no less beautiful." The Village Voice describes her sound: "Satie goes to Appalachia, Morricone goes to the Knitting Factory, and you, dear art-folk fan, die and go to heaven."

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Pianist/composer Myra Melford presents a solo piano program of old and new compositions/improvisations, including the New York debut of her new live electronics and "extended piano" piece, created at UC Berkeley¹s CNMAT (center for new music and audio technologies.) Melford¹s playing recasts the blues and boogie-woogie of her hometown Chicago, folds in elements of the music of Eastern Europe and India, and blends them with the rangy, percussive avant-garde stylings she cultivated in studies with Don Pullen and Henry Threadgill. This personal musical vocabulary is further enriched by a lush lyricism and organized by an architectural sense of composition that she derived from classical training. Melford currently leads or co-leads four groups , all of which have recorded in the past several years. In addition, Melford has recorded with Jenny Scheinman, Joseph Jarman, Leroy Jenkins and Butch Morris. She is currently Assistant Professor of Improvisation and Jazz in the Music Department at the University of California at Berkeley.

She has performed in more than 30 countries and has won major awards for composition and piano performance. Francis Davis calls her "the genuine article, the most gifted pianist/composer to emerge from jazz since Anthony Davis." Her approach to her instrument is characterized by Coda Magazine: "Myra Melford is at once a dancer, a romantic and a savage suckerpuncher at
the bench . . . beating all hell out of the piano and making it beautiful."

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Composer/pianist Drew Krause presents a mix of new and recent solo, electronic, and chamber works that include Krause on piano and other surprise guests. Krause writes compositional algorithms that discover musical forms ranging from the poised and benign to the intricate and
uncanny. He has written over 50 works for instrumental and electronic media. His music is published by Frog Peak and has been recorded by Innova, New Ariel, Frog Peak, and Bonk Records. He has received grants from Harvestworks, The MacDowell Colony, The Wurlitzer Foundation, and Meet the Composer, and has held residencies at Stanford University and Brooklyn
College.

A composition graduate of Juilliard and the University of Illinois, his principal teachers were Herbert Brun, Salvatore Martirano, Vincent Persichetti, Bernard Rands, and Stuart Smith. Also active as a conductor, Krause has conducted works by Boulez, Xenakis, Braxton, Varese, Webern, Stravinsky, and others. He has performed the piano music of Cage, Messiaen, Finnissy, Lachenmann, Stockhausen, Feldman, Andriessen, Kagel and numerous European modernists; dozens of commissioned works, and collaborations encompassing music theatre, improvisation, and live electronics with the Thump Piano Duo, the Performer's Workshop Ensemble, and many others.

From 1988 through 1995 he led seminars in computer music and experimental composition at the University of Illinois. He has served as resident pianist for the Bonk, ThreeTwo, New Music Miami, and SubTropics festivals, and was musical director of FUNMusic in Urbana from 1993 to 1996. Recent performance venues include Roulette, Diapason Gallery, the International Computer Music
Conference, the SCI National Conference, FOCUS!, and the Ought-One festival. Krause lives and works in New York City.