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A gifted interdisciplinary artist of the highest caliber, C. Spencer Yeh will showcase  a series of new works, including a portrait – part homage and part perversion – of his longtime collaborator, Nate Wooley, as well as a new work for piano and electronics. Wooley will be present in dual role: as an improviser in response to the former, and as an accompanist on piano for the latter. In addition, Yeh will premiere a quad channel tape composition, The Ohio Guitar, documenting Yeh's acquisition of a replica Kay Solo King K4102. This original concert will be accompanied by a screening of a film that documents Yeh’s activity as a volunteer trailer editor for Spectacle Theater in Brooklyn, reflecting on the roles, processes, and consequences of the video editor and the modern electronic composer.

C. Spencer Yeh was born in Taipei, Taiwan, studied film at Northwestern University in Chicago IL, repped Cincinnati OH for many years, and is now based in Brooklyn NY. Originally introduced and developed in an auto-didactic musical practice, Yeh’s work has become increasingly interdisciplinary, incorporating his background in video and other mediums. As an improviser, Yeh is focused on developing a personal vocabulary using violin, voice, and electronics. In compositional modes, Yeh works with all aspects physically, visually, conceptually, and aurally available. He is concerned not only with the sensual, but the gestural as well. Recognized for his musical projects Burning Star Core and CS Yeh, as well as many other individual and collaborative activities, Yeh has performed and presented work internationally in a wide spectrum of venues and situations.

Situations in 2013 so far include duets with cellist Okkyung Lee for Andrew Lampert’s Synonym for Untitled at the Whitney Museum, presenting solo vocal improvisations at the Segue Reading Series in NYC, and at the ICA Philadelphia via Primary Information, a duo with saxophonist Don Dietrich (of Borbetomagus), a trio with Jason Lescalleet and Nate Young (of Wolf Eyes), and sharing an evening at the Canal Series with artist Mary Lucier, both as soloist and as support in her original multimedia performance of I Am Sitting in a Room.

http://www.dronedisco.com

C. Spencer Yeh's performance is sponsored in part by the Jerome Foundation.

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NYC premiere & New Amsterdam CD Release Party

With Nadia Sirota & Missy Mazzoli

Electroacoustic composer Daniel Wohl's project Corps Exquis incorporates electronics, chamber music performance and video art to create an immersive multimedia experience. Performed by the virtuosic chamber ensemble TRANSIT with Wohl on electronics, each piece is accompanied by a video created specifically for it by some of New York's brightest young visual artists: Antoine Catala, Alexis Gambis, Satan's Pearl Horses, Andrew Steinmetz & Teddy Stern, Brina Thurston, and Yui Kugimiya. Inspired by the "exquisite corpse" parlor game popular in Surrealist circles in 1920s Paris through which a group of artists creates a single piece of art, the visuals blend together disparate aesthetics to create a surprising body of work.

This concert at Roulette serves as the NY premiere of the project and celebrates the CD release of the music from Corps Exquis on New Amsterdam Records (June 25).

Acclaimed as one of the young artists “shaping our contemporary music scene and defining what it means to be a composer in the 21st century" (NPR) and heralded for his ability to “blur the line between electronic and acoustic instrumentation and seemingly melt both elements into a greater organic whole” (WNYC), Paris-born Wohl creates a remarkable hybrid of music that is part-mechanical and part-organic on the aptly titled Corps Exquis, a French term that translates in English as "Exquisite Body." Instead of exploring the gap between his classical composition background and his collaborations within the ever-evolving electronic music scene (recently with Laurel Halo and Julia Holter at the Ecstatic Music Festival), Wohl strives to close it.

This concert also features a set performed by viola virtuosa Nadia Sirota, who will perform selections from her critically-acclaimed recent solo album, Baroque (New Amsterdam Records). Hailed by the New York Times as “a bold new-music interpreter and the violist of choice among downtown ensembles these days,” Sirota has been praised for her “command and eloquence,” (Boston Globe) and for being one of New York’s “brightest, busiest players” (Time Out New York). Composer/performer Missy Mazzoli, deemed “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” (Time Out New York), will join Sirota for a rendition of Mazzoli's composition Tooth and Nail, a hypnotic blend of electronic textures and deft performance. This performance marks the first time since the release of Baroque that these two will share a stage.
nadiasirota.com
missymazzoli.com

Paris-born electroacoustic composer Daniel Wohl's work has been commissioned and/or performed by cutting-edge ensembles and performers such as Eighth Blackbird, So Percussion, and Calder Quartet, as well as American Symphony Orchestra, Albany Symphony, and St Luke’s Chamber Ensemble. His work has been heard at Carnegie Hall, Webster Hall, the Bang on a Can Marathon, MoMA, the Bang on a Can Marathon, the Ecstatic Music Festival, and NordKlang (Switzerland). Wohl's recent projects include an upcoming release of Wohl's string quartet with electronics by the Calder Quartet; a newly commissioned piece by Mantra Percussion and the Mivos Quartet; and a recently performed evening-length piece co-composed with art pop singer Julia Holter and electronic artist Laurel Halo (commissioned by the Ecstatic Music Festival).

Wohl is the recepient of Meet the Composer/Commissioning Music USA grant, the American Composers Forum/Jerome Foundation grant, a C.A.P grant, a grant from the Barlow Endowment, several MET Life Creative Connections grants, awards from the Finale National Composers Competition, and three ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards. An active educator, Wohl has taught courses in composition, orchestration, and theory at Sarah Lawrence College and at Yale. He holds degrees from the Yale School of Music, the University of Michigan School of Music and Bard College.
danielwohlmusic.com

TRANSIT is Evelyn Farny (cello); Andie Springer (violin); David Friend (piano, toy piano, melodica, percussion); Joe Bergen: (mallets, percussion, melodica); Sara Budde (clarinet, bass clarinet). Formed in 2007, TRANSIT has established a reputation for producing exciting concerts featuring young composers and for special projects that push the boundaries of musical convention. Through the DoubleBill Series, TRANSIT has worked closely with emerging composers from around the globe and presented world premiere-studded concerts for audiences throughout New York City. In special projects, the collective has experimented with concepts as disparate as binary-gated amplification (Tristan Perich), music for hearing-deprived musicians (Eric KM Clark), large-scale multimedia shows (Daniel Wohl), and music for hand-built speaker feedback instruments (Lesley Flanigan). TRANSIT has performed at Le Poisson Rouge, Issue Project Room, and Galapagos Art Space; for the MATA Interval, Astoria Music Society, and Darmstadt Classics of the Avant Garde series; and on joi nt programs alongside artists including So Percussion, Judy Dunaway, Arutro en el Barco, and Margaret Leng Tan, among many other interesting engagements. TRANSIT has also been a resident ensemble at the CUNY Grad Center (City University of New York).
transitnewmusic.com

Ear Heart Music


“… a feisty contemporary-classical concert series” –The New York Times

“scintillating... phenomenal programming... impeccably curated... truly original... one of our favorite new music series” –Time Out New York

A showcase of highly talented and adventurous performers, composers, and collaborative artists, Ear Heart Music is a modern chamber music series for modern ears. Operating at the Tank in Manhattan for the past three years, founder and director Amelia Lukas has “piloted impressive events on a shoestring budget. Roulette offers greater resources, and Ms. Lukas is taking advantage in an ambitious season filled with premieres and cross-disciplinary collaborations” (The New York Times).

According to Time Out New York, Ear Heart Music “has become a staple in the New York new music soundscape." Its thoughtfully designed programs highlighting recent masterworks stimulate creative thought and instill new avenues of perspective in the listener. The consistent level of intelligent and inspiring music-making resonates in the mind and body. Shows include electronic processing, performance art, visual art, film, and dance, providing deeper context for the music. Unique artist pairings, diverse programming, and the integral incorporation new work all contribute to Ear Heart Music playing a major role in reshaping the chamber music landscape for the 21st century.
earheartmusic.org
facebook.com/pages/Ear-Heart-Music/116316791738457

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Peter Gordon and the Love of Life Orchestra (LOLO) have been longtime shakers in the downtown experimental music scene. With their unique world music and dance-inspired grooves and penchant for sonic adventures, this dynamic ensemble stands apart from its new music ensembles peers for its ecstatic embrace of bon vivant: an intelligent experimental ensemble that can easily moonlight and entertain the dance halls or rock all night in the dim cathedrals of punk rock. With the gang in town, and with video by Kit Fitzgerald, LOLO presents the premiere of Peter Gordon's latest masterpiece, Symphony #5.

Paul Shapiro, saxes
Katie Porter, clarinets
Peter Zummo, trombone
Max Gordon, trumpet
Elio Villafranca, piano
Ned Sublette, guitar
Randy Gun, guitar
Yunior Terry, bass
Robby Ameen, drums
Peter Gordon, sax, organ, synth

Video by Kit Fitzgerald

Peter Gordon is a composer, saxophonist, arranger, and producer whose music has been noted for its original blend of lyricism, wit and drama, with an underlying funky groove. A seminal figure in Downtown music, Gordon gained attention with his Love of Life Orchestra, which synthesized experimental music with dance music and rock.  An early proponent of using the recording studio as a compositional tool, Gordon has released recordings on Lust/Unlust, CBS, Lovely Music, and Newtone Records, most recently the retrospective on DFA Records Love of Life Orchestra,  and the upcoming 12” Beachcombing with the UK electro-industrial group Factory Floor, on Optimo. Gordon composes operas and scores for theater and dance, receiving an Obie Award and a Bessie Award, and he has an ongoing collaboration with video artist Kit Fitzgerald. He is music producer for Robert Ashley’s Vidas Perfectas, and his orchestrations for Michael Tilson Thomas’ The Thomashefskys were recently performed by the New York Philharmonic.

http://www.petergordon.com

Born roughly in 1979 as a collaborative project between Gordon and David van Tieghem, the Love of Life Orchestra (better known as LOLO), has been described by guitarist Ned Sublette as "with its soap-opera name suggesting an embrace of the trashy, [LOLO]played lean, rigorous, instrumental miniatures whose timbre dispense with the high seriousness that plague new music of the day. Though experimental in outlook, it evokes the fun of early '60s r&b and rock combos like King Curtis's Kingpins or the Ventures, as well as the thumping timbral palette of popular orchestral disco records."

 Photo by Paula Court

Full Description:

Ben Greenberg began Hubble in 2011 as a solo guitar project extended from his work with avant-rock band Zs and punk-fuck band Pygmy Shrews. Relying on virtuosic guitar techniques more in line with metal shredders or blues heroes than the experimental scene, Greenberg implemented finger-tapping and minimal use of pedals (no looping ever!) in his long-form compositions, setting him apart from legions of crescendo-building contemporaries. A cassette on NNA Tapes in 2011 entitled Hubble Linger was the first available recording from Greenberg's project, The tape was well received, even inciting electronic musician Keith Fullerton Whitman to claim: “…I’m fairly floored by this extended solo-trance-out from Zs guitarist Ben Greenberg, who seems to have invented a device that halts time (musical, actual, and meta-physical); its use is put to great effect across this 60-minute blast of cycling 'stereo' chord progressions and assorted haze(s) that approaches the fervour of MBV / Belong’s filtered-out high-gain wash while retaining the minimalist patina of Charlemagne Palestine piece … awesome.” It was followed by the debut full-length album Hubble Drums later that year on Northern Spy Records, which received such praise as...

"At once heady and visceral, psychedelic and intensely lucid, Hubble’s mesmeric guitar webs are laser-etched incantations to the sublime. At the luminous crossroads of John Lee Hooker and Philip Glass, this is virtuosic and visionary sound-sculpture that kicks the concept of what is music just a little further down the road. There is something new under the sun. Just listen." –Michael Azerrad

"Hubble’s euphoric wheedlechurn is where the measured precision of downtown minimalism meets the unhinged aggression of Brooklyn loft noise–truly hypnotic and truly New York." –Christopher R. Weingarten

Benjamin Greenberg was born at Beth Israel Hospital at 16th street and 1st avenue in New York City on February 22nd, 1985. Six years later, he began studying music very, very seriously and has maintained that same level of intensity and focus ever since. Growing up in the city afforded young Ben a multitude of musical outlets once he was old enough to meet fellow musical travelers. By his estimate he has played in over 50 bands in his less than 30 years on this Earth. Among that list would be found lesser-known projects of yesteryear, such as The Fugue, Archaeopteryx, and The Jazz Standard Youth Orchestra, or better known and currently active bands of which he used to be a part such as doom-gloomers Bloody Panda, or free-jazz-bastards, Little Women. While attending the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, Mr. Greenberg joined NYC avant-mainstays Zs at the ripe old age of 21. His six-year tenure in the band taught him ohhhhh so much about sight reading, really high pitched guitar harmonics, Morton Feldman, and the place of the saxophone in contemporary music. At the same time, his Black Flag-cum-Flipper punk band, Cutter, was turning into his X-cum-No Trend punk trio, Pygmy Shrews, who then slayed many a soul in town and across the land. Both bands helped establish his reputation as a quite singularly-voiced guitar player, a ruthless and unashamed composer of tunes, songs and longer forms, and a visionary and resourceful recording engineer. These days Ben spends most of his time on the road with the band The Men, but still finds plenty of time to work on Hubble.
http://missionhubble.blogspot.com
http://wearethemen.blogspot.com

Ben Greenberg's performance is mode possible by the Jerome Foundation.