Full Description:

ETHEL, Speak Percussion and The [kāj] Ensemble perform 3 premieres in an intimate musical conversation with the last speakers of 3 nearly extinct languages.

The Vanishing Languages Project  
created by composer, Kevin James

New York’s premiere post classical string quartet, ETHEL, the Australian innovators, Speak Percussion, and new music all-stars, The [kāj] Ensemble will premiere three multi-media musical works featuring live musicians w/surround sound audio content drawn from field recordings of nearly extinct languages.

In preparation for the Vanishing Languages project, Kevin traveled to a variety of remote communities to create new field recordings of the few remaining native speakers of each of 4 language and comprehensively research existing sound archives. The languages Kevin has focused on include Quileute (a Native American tribe of the Pacific Northwest) Dalabon and Jawoyn (Australian aboriginal languages of Arnhem Land), and Hokkaido Ainu (aboriginal language of the large northern Japanese island).

On Kevin’s arrival in La Push, WA there were 4 remaining native speakers of Quileute. On Kevin’s departure, there were 3. As of today, there are 2. There are 3 remaining native speakers of each of the Australian Aboriginal languages, Jawoyn and Dalabon. The Ainu language has no remaining native speakers.

Featured premieres will include Biyi-keninjh Kah-yenjdjung Dalabon (Speak), Counting in Quileute (the combined ensembles), and Ainu Inuma (ETHEL).

for more information, please visit www.kajensemble.org

These concerts a made possible with generous funding from New Music USA. the New York State Council on the Arts and Arts Victoria

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Each performance will include an audience Q&A session following the first work

Program for March 28th
Biyi-keninjh Kah-yenjdjung Dalabon
performed by Speak Percussion

Counting in Quileute
performed by the combined ensembles

Program for March 29th
Ainu Inuma
performed by ETHEL

Counting in Quileute
performed by the combined ensembles

Kevin James has become a fixture in the New York new music scene both as a composer and a performer. His broad palette spans from free jazz and improvisational works, audience participation and multi-media to traditional forms and modal harmonies. Kevin is noted for his work with surround-sound, electro acoustic environments involving spoken word and live performers as in his opera-lingua, The Portraits Project. Kevin has collaborated with literary luminaries, rising stars & slam champions such as Charles Simic, A. Van Jordan, Eugene Gloria, Maurice Manning,& Regie Cabico. Two recent works have been premiered by John Schaefer on WNYC radio, and his piece Horobi No Naka Kara was performed in Hiroshima as part of the 60th anniversary commemoration activities. Kevin’s music has been performed by many of America's permiere performers including the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Orchestra of St. Lukes, Meridian Arts Ensemble, Glen Velez, Fulcrum Point New Music Project, Oregon Bach Festival & others.

Full Description:

Jerome Kitzke will be giving a pre-concert talk at 7:30 PM - Free with purchase of event ticket.

Jerome Kitzke and The Mad Coyote, with special guests ETHEL, actor Jennifer Kathryn Marshall, pianist Sarah Cahill, percussionist Barbara Merjan and accordionist Guy Klucevsek, will perform five works of Mr. Kitzke, including the world premiere of Winter Count, with Jennifer Kathryn Marshall, ETHEL, and Barbara Merjan. Other pieces include Breath and Bone performed by Mr. Klucevsek and the composer, There Is a Field performed by Ms. Cahill, The Green Automobile performed by the composer, and The Paha Sapa Give-Back performed by The Mad Coyote: Peggy Kampmeier - piano, and the percussionists, Barbara Merjan, Jay Johnson, Jude Traxler and Mike Perdue.

Jerome Kitzke was born in Milwaukee in 1955 and has lived in New York City since 1984. His music arises from the North American landscape and celebrates vitality in its purest forms, thriving on the spirit of driving jazz, Plains Indian song, and Beat Generation poetry, where freedom and ritual converge. It is direct, dramatic, and visceral, always with an ear to the sacred ground. Often political and always topical, his music aims at revealing the heart of what it means to be an American early in the Twenty First Century, especially as it relates to how we live on this land and the way we came to live on it.

This event is generously supported by New Music USA’s MetLife Creative Connections.

Full Description:

$35 General Admission
$100 Front Rows
*No student, senior or member pricing

*$65 of the Front Row ticket price is a tax deductible donation to Roulette in celebration of its Grand Opening*

Acclaimed as America's premier postclassical string quartet, ETHEL invigorates contemporary concert music with refreshing exuberance, fierce intensity, imaginative programming and exceptional artistry. Formed in 1998, New York's ebullient ETHEL is comprised of Juilliard-trained performers Jennifer Choi (violin), Cornelius Dufallo (violin), Ralph Farris (viola), and Dorothy Lawson (cello).

ETHEL performs adventurous music of the past four decades, with emphasis on works composed since 1995. Their repertoire includes self-composed works, as well as works by such luminaries as Julia Wolfe, Phil Kline, John Zorn, Steve Reich, John King, JacobTV, David Lang, Scott Johnson, Don Byron, Marcelo Zarvos, Evan Ziporyn, and Mary Ellen Childs.
Boldly exploring new synergies between tradition and technology, ETHEL initiates innovative collaborations with an extraordinary community of American and international artists

Guitarist/composer Marc Ribot presents Film Noir - an ensemble exploring a lonely place between classic noir film scores of the 40's thru 60's, and the 80's No-Wave bands who worshipped them - including re-arrangements of Henry Mancini (Touch of Evil), Andre Previn (Scene of the Crime), Roy Budd (Get Carter), on the one hand; and John Lurie's Lounge Lizards, John Zorn, Rootless Cosmopolitans, and new noir by Marc Ribot on the other.

Originally commissioned as a project for the New School's Noir Arts Festival in April 2011, the premiere featured Ribot's fellow Lounge Lizard veterans Doug Weiselman (reeds) and Curtis Fowkles (trombone), plus Shahzad Ismaily (bass), Rob Burger (keys), John Mettam (drums, perc), and a 3 piece string section (violin, viola, cello) led by Christina Courtin.
TBA

Shelley Hirsch is "an unorthodox, extraordinary fusion of vocalist, composer, and performance artist " (Anne LeBaron) whose work encompasses story telling pieces, staged performances, compositions, improvisations, collaborations, installations, and radioplays, which have been presented on 5 continents... Hirsch has performed hundreds of concerts of improvised music with great musicians including Anthony Coleman, Christian Marclay, Ikue Mori, Toshio Kajiwara, Hans Reichel, Min Xiao Fen, Tony Buck, David Simons, Johannes, Connie and Matthias Bauer, Paul Lovens, David Watson, Marina Rosenfeld, Jim Staley, DJ Olive, Denman Maroney, Joey Baron, Mark Dresser, Ned Rothenberg, Marc Ribot, Cyro Baptista, Butch Morris, Elliot Sharp, Uchihashi Kasuhisa, Joe Williamson, etc, etc.

Composer, improviser and multi-instrumentalist, has situated himself for more than thirty years in the area where rock music and new music meet. Co-founder of the British underground band Henry Cow (1968-78), he moved to New York in the late seventies and came into contact with many of the musicians with whom he's since been associated, including, for example, John Zorn, Ikue Mori, Tom Cora, Zeena Parkins, and Bob Ostertag.