Category: Press Releases

[RESIDENCY] Gabrielle Herbst: Vulnerability

What: World premiere of composer and vocalist Gabrielle Herbst’s opera exploring vulnerability, anxiety, fear, and struggle through the lens of self-care and interpersonal relationships.
When: Thursday, May 31, 2018
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $20 Door, $15 Online
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368

Brooklyn, NY – How do we talk about our lives in 2018? What methods do we use to explore it? Gabrielle Herbst returns to Roulette to present Vulnerability, an opera unpacking America’s current sociopolitical climate and the ways we live within it. Exploring themes of personal and collective vulnerability, anxiety, fear and struggle, while investigating self-care and interpersonal relationships, this process-based work is written for two voices and two loop pedals, electronics, harp, violin, cello, flute, piano and clarinet, and is rendered through a dreamlike non-narrative tableaux with close harmonization, textural rhythms, melismatic vocals, electronics, and cross-genre pollination. The work seeks to connect internal struggles to outward means.

Gabrielle Herbst (b. 1986) is a composer and vocalist residing in Brooklyn. Herbst’s formal training began at an early age, studying Balinese dance and gamelan in Indonesia while learning both the clarinet and piano. She continued her training at Bard College where she studied voice and composition. Her work has been showcased at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, as well as Roulette, who in 2014 commissioned and premiered her first opera, Bodiless. Herbst has also developed a repertoire of short-form, vocal-centric compositions under the name GABI, driven by solitary explorations with a dual-track loop pedal.

The Nouveau Classical Project is a New York-based, all-women contemporary classical music ensemble that is “bringing a refreshing edge to the widely conservative genre” (VICE). It began by collaborating with fashion designers for its concerts and has expanded to creating multidisciplinary performances. Its mission is to engage new audiences and show that classical music is a living, breathing art form.

Lineup:

The Nouveau Classical Project
Laura Cocks – Flute
Mara Mayer – Clarinet
Maya Bennardo – Violin
Thea Mesirow – Cello
Sugar Vendil – Piano
Marilu Donovan – Harp
Charlotte Mundy – Voice
Gabrielle Herbst – Voice

thingNY and Varispeed: Musical Voices Around A Table

What: Experimental composer-collectives thingNY and Varispeed perform three vocal-heavy works around a communal table on Roulette’s stage.
When: Wednesday, May 30, 2018
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $25 Door, $20 Online
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368

Brooklyn, NY – Two quirky, unconventional groups merge for vocal chamber music by Gelsey Bell, Rick Burkhardt, and the legendary absurdist Kenneth Gaburo. First, thingNY presents a short selection of songs from Gelsey Bell’s Rolodex, in which the ensemble surrounds the interrogation table to investigate a crime. Next, thingNY performs Rick Burkhardt’s Passover, a performance-ritual for six singing/speaking instrumentalists seated at a dinner table. Finally, Varispeed performs a new homespun arrangement of Kenneth Gaburo’s 1968 cult-classic Maledetto, a fusion of taxonomy lecture, absurdist inner dialogue, Dadaist choral music, and your uncle’s dirty jokes for seven “virtuoso speakers.” Three works are performed around a communal table.

thingNY is a New-York-based collective of composer‐performers who fuse electronic and acoustic chamber music with new opera, improvisation, theater, song, and installation.

Varispeed is a collective of composer-performers that creates site-specific, sometimes-participatory, oftentimes-durational, forevermore-experimental events.

Rick Burkhardt is an Obie-award-winning playwright, composer, director, and performer. He is a founding member of the Nonsense Company, an experimental chamber music-theater trio, and the Prince Myshkins, a cabaret-folk political satire duo.

Lineup:
Gelsey Bell – Voice, Percussion, Celtic Harp
Andrew Livingston – Voice, Double Bass, Cello
Paul Pinto – Voice, Percussion
Erin Rogers – Voice, Saxophone
Dave Ruder – Voice, Clarinet, Guitar
Jeffrey Young – Voice, Violin
Brian McCorkle – Voice
Aliza Simons – Voice

Anaïs Maviel: DIáSPORA / Cross Times

What: Anaïs Maviel celebrates the release of her duo DIáSPORA’s new album exploring trance in popular music.
When: Tuesday, May 29, 2018
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $20 Door, $15 Online
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368

Brooklyn, NY – Vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Anaïs Maviel and collaborators present the composer’s latest investigations into the manifestations of song in relation to trance in electro-acoustic settings. Cross Times, will focus on the dilatation and crossing of time layers in songs written on the n’goni (West African gourd lute). The second set of the evening will focus on the collaboration of the touring duo DIáSPORA in conjunction with their debut record of the same name. DIáSPORA seeks to use voice and rhythm as a base for exploration of trance in popular music. The album was recorded live in Mexico City and produced in South, Central and North America, in collaboration with Principa (MX) & Hérnia de Discos (BR).

Album Digital Release: May 25 2018

Album Preview: https://soundcloud.com/ana-s-maviel/sets/diaspora-1/s-feAa

Anaïs Maviel is a vocalist, percussionist, composer, music director, educator, curator, and healer. Her work focuses on the function of music as essential to settling common grounds, addressing Relation, and creating utopian futures. She works at the crossroads of several mediums – music, visual art, dance, theater, and performance art.

Chiquita Magic is interested in the cross-pollination of seemingly contrasting styles (cumbia, salsa, choral music, hip-hop, jazz) with futuristic electronic textures.

Luke Stewart is a DC-based multi-Instrumentalist and organizer, recognized by the Washington Post as a key contributor to the scene there. In DC his regular ensembles include Trio OOO with legendary DC Free Jazz saxophonist Aaron Martin, Six-Six, a duo with guitarist Anthony Pirog, experimental jazz trio Heart of the Ghost, and experimental electronic group MOM^2 (Mind Over Matter, Music Over Mind).

Sam Yulsman is a composer, pianist and multimedia artist from New York City, whose music spans a wide range of musical idioms. Currently, Yulsman performs regularly as a member of Brandon Lopez’s trio “the Mess”, and co-directs “Little Moments of Invisible Death” – a multi-media performance installation, designed and performed in collaboration with Martin Hiendl.

Lineup:

DIáSPORA
Chiquita Magic – synths, voice
Anaïs Maviel – surdo, voice

Cross Times
Sam Yulsman – keyboards, electronics
Luke Stewart – bass
Anaïs Maviel – voice, n’goni

Yuko Fujiyama Ensemble: Album Release Celebration

What: Yuko Fujiyama performs with her jazz quartet in celebration of the release of a new album.
When: Monday, April 16, 2018, 8pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $20 Online, $25 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: https://roulette.org/event/yuko-fujiyama-ensemble-album-release-celebration/

Brooklyn, NY — After a 15-year hiatus, jazz pianist Yuko Fujiyama returns to Roulette to perform with her new quartet and celebrate the release of their first album. Fujiyama will be joined by Graham Haynes on cornet and flugelhorn, Jennifer Choi on violin, and Reggie Nicholson on drums and percussion.

Born in Sapporo, Japan, Fujiyama studied music in college and moved to the U.S. in 1987, after being touched by the music of Cecil Taylor. Since 1993, she has been an active performer of original music in concerts, clubs, and festivals in and around New York City and overseas. She has performed as a leader with musicians such as William Parker, Mark Dresser, Ikue Mori, Susie Ibarra, Billy Bang, Mark Feldman and Roy Campbell, among many others. She is featured on a number of CDs, including two releases with her ensemble on the CIMP label. In the words of the Village Voice, “she’s created her own pass.”

Lineup
Yuko Fujiyama — Piano
Jennifer Choi — Violin
Graham Haynes — Cornet, Flugelhorn
Reggie Nicholson — Drums, Percussion

Phew: Voice Hardcore // Laura Ortman

What: Japanese legend Phew performs a voice-only set in celebration of the release of her new album. Violinist Laura Ortman opens.
When: Monday, May 21, 2018
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $25 Door, $20 Online
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368

Brooklyn, NY – Mingling electronics and extended vocals, Phew performs a set at Roulette in celebration of the release of her new Mesh Records album, Voice Hardcore. Phew has been a pioneer of pop and avant-garde music for nearly 40 years. Her early albums have been cited as among the “Greatest Albums of Japanese Rock ‘n’ Roll,” and her Osaka post-punk band Aunt Sally was inspired by the Sex Pistols. Voice Hardcores was recorded in eight hours over three days in Phew’s Tokyo bedroom, and she’s described the project to Pitchfork as “an attempt to make new reverberations that I have never heard before using only my body.” Violinist Laura Ortman opens.

Phew’s career began in the late 1970s as lead singer of Osaka punk group Aunt Sally (whose only full-length was released by Vanity Records in 1979). Ryuichi Sakamoto produced her first solo release in 1980, a two-song single, and in 1981 Pass Records released her debut album, a bonafide classic recorded with original Can members Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit at Conny Plank’s studio in Germany. She has forged a singular path over the past thirty-plus years, collaborating with folks from DAF, Einstürzende Neubauten, Boredoms, Anton Fier, Bill Laswell and more. Her early albums have been cited as among the “Greatest Albums of Japanese Rock ‘n’ Roll,” while her most recent albums, Voice Hardcore and Light Sleep, have received critical acclaim, finding her breaking new ground and staying at the forefront of fresh electronic and vocal music.

Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) is a Brooklyn-based composer, musician, and artist. She produces solo albums, live performances and film/art soundtracks and frequently collaborates with artists in film, music, art, dance, multi-media, activistism and poetry, such as Tony Conrad, Jock Soto, Raven Chacon, Nanobah Becker, Okkyung Lee, Martin Bisi, Caroline Monnet, Michelle Latimer, Raphaele Shirley and Martha Colburn.

Lineup:
Phew – Voice, Electronics
Laura Ortman – Violin, Electronics

Kyle Marshall Choregraphy: Colored

What: An interactive dance piece celebrating the twisted beauty of blackness.
When: Tuesday, April 10, 2018, 8pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $15 Online, $20 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: https://roulette.org/event/danceroulette-kyle-marshall-choreography-colored/

Brooklyn, NY — Colored presents three black dancers whose movements contend with tokenism, appropriation, stereotype, and representation while demonstrating the inherent struggle in abstracting the black dancing form. The piece features original music by Matt Clegg and Pastor T. L. Barrett and will involve some audience participation. This event will be livestreamed.

Kyle Marshall Choreography (KMC) is a dance company that sees the moving body as a celebration of a beautiful form, a container of history, and an igniter of social disruption.

Kyle Marshall is a dancer and dance maker working in New York City and New Jersey. Marshall currently dances with Doug Elkins choreography etc. and is an apprentice for the Trisha Brown Dance Company. In the past, he has worked with Tiffany Mills Company, Ryan McNamara, Heidi Latsky, and was a founding member of 10 Hairy Legs. He organized Kyle Marshall Choreography in 2014 to help support his dance-making. Marshall’s work has been performed at venues including Jacob’s Pillow Inside/Out, DanceNow Joe’s Pub, NJPAC, NYC Summerstage, Montclair Dance Festival, Movement Research at Judson Church, Wassaic Arts Project, Triskelion Arts, and Dixon Place. He has also received residencies from the DanceNow at Silo, Jamaica Performing Arts Center, CoLab Arts and was the 2016 Dance on the Lawn Montclair Dance Festival Emerging Commissioned Choreographer. In 2017, Marshall was awarded the New Jersey Artist Fellowship in Choreography. Marshall graduated Magna Cum Laude from Rutgers University with a BFA in Dance.

Performers
Kyle Marshall – choreographer
Oluwadamilare “Dare” Ayroinde
Myssi Robinson

Music
M. Clegg
Pastor T. L. Barrett

Ka Baird: centers: 4 channels

What: Ka Baird premieres two piano pieces incorporating 4-channel synthesis with spatialized light and movement.
When: Sunday, May 13, 2018
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $20/15 Door, $15 Online
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368

Brooklyn, NY – Seated at a piano in the middle of Roulette’s concert hall, with the audience in the round, Ka Baird will premiere centers: 4 channels. The program, part of her Jerome Residency at Roulette, will consist of two pieces: piano: vivification exercises with Crystal Penalosa, and voices: source. Both pieces incorporate 4-channel synthesis (in which speakers are positioned at the four corners of the listening space, reproducing signals that are wholly or in part independent of one another), as well as spatialized light and movement.

Ka Baird is a composer and performer living and working in NYC. She is one of the founding and continuing members of the experimental outfit Spires That In The Sunset Rise founded in Chicago in September 2001. Since relocating to NYC in November 2014, she has set off in numerous directions apart from Spires to both pursue new collaborations and hone her solo work. Her current work explores piano, electroacoustic interventions, extended vocal techniques, physical movement, and the electronic manipulation of the flute. She is interested specifically in performance/sound as a means to break recurring thought patterns and create passages into pure energy potential.

Crystal Penalosa is an American artist & interdisciplinary designer based in New York. Their work primarily focuses on performance with modular electronics, utilizing signal processing as a collaborative tool to sculpt sounds in real-time. Penalosa has performed collaboratively and solo in New York at Issue Project Room, Microscope Gallery, Sediment Gallery, MoMA PS1, Experimental Intermedia, and at Spektrum in Berlin. They currently work with the veteran underground record label Generations Unlimited.

Lineup:

piano: vivification exercises
Ka Baird – Piano, Voice
Crystal Penalosa – Electronics, Processing

voices: source
Ka Baird – Voice

Che Chen with Talice Lee and Patrick Holmes

What: 75 Dollar Bill’s Che Chen present slow-moving modal music in just intonation for bass recorder, clarinet, violin, voices, organ
When: Wednesday, May 9, 2018
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $20 Door, $15 Online
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: https://roulette.org/event/commission-che-chen-with-talice-lee-and-patrick-holmes/

Brooklyn, NY – Widely celebrated as the guitarist and multi-instrumentalist in 75 Dollar Bill, Che Chen has taken this Roulette Jerome Commission as an opportunity to push deep into the sound worlds of modal improvisation, untempered tunings, and extended, slow-moving durational structures. Built around a just intonation tuning matrix and modes devised by Chen, this intimate, evening-length work aims to slow the listener’s attention and direct it towards minute differences in pitch, timbre, and awareness.

Chen has assembled a new ensemble especially for this piece featuring Talice Lee (violin, voice), Patrick Holmes (clarinet, voice) and himself (bass recorder, voice, electric organ). Bracketed by long tone harmonies and unison themes, individuals improvise at length with extemporaneous support from the other two players. The trio’s interaction is often framed by static, microtonal chords from Chen’s organ, resulting in a “triangle within a circle” structure of voices.

Che Chen is a musician and multi-instrumentalist based in Queens and Stonybrook, NY. Born in 1978 to Taiwanese immigrant parents, Chen studied painting and drawing before turning his attention to sound. This change in direction has made improvisation, the harmonic series and the ecstatic possibilities of music his main preoccupations ever since. Chen’s interest in modal, microtonal improvisation has led him to an earnest, if rather informal study of the musical traditions of North Africa, India, and the middle east, as well as the acoustical theories underpinning their tuning systems (just intonation).

Lineup:
Che Chen – Bass Recorder, Voice, Electric Organ
Talice Lee – Violin, Voice
Patrick Holmes – Clarinet, Voice

Cecilia Lopez: machinic fantasies

What: Cecilia Lopez’s multichannel video and sound installation uses oil drums that have been transformed into playback systems.
When: Tuesday, May 8, 2018
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $20 Door, $15 Online
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: https://roulette.org/event/commission-cecilia-lopez-machinic-fantasies

Brooklyn, NY – Cecilia Lopez’s machinic fantasies is a performative installation based on the idea of producing a sonic and visual live “mediation process/machine.” The Roulette-commissioned work utilizes multichannel video and sound spatialization techniques to augment the audience’s perception of specific kinetic sound objects. Performers will hand-spin oil drums that have been transformed into revolving playback systems to amplify appropriated sound and field recordings, spoken word, and live acoustic/electronic instruments. Images of these sound objects will also be projected onto different screens, creating an immersive environment of synchronicity, and asynchronicity.

Cecilia Lopez is a composer, musician, and multimedia artist from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her work explores perception and transmission processes focusing on the relationship between sound technologies and listening practices. She works across the media of performance, sound, installation and the creation of sound devices and systems.

Jean Carla Rodea is a Brooklyn-based vocalist, interdisciplinary artist, and educator, born and raised in Mexico City. She is dedicated to perform a plethora of music in a variety of settings -from solo to large ensembles. She has performed and recorded with Darius Jones’ vocal quartet Elizabeth-Caroline Unit, Gerald Cleaver’s Uncle June and NiMbNl quintet, Anthony Braxton’s Syntactical Ghost Trance Music Choir. In addition to this, she leads her own projects: AZARES, trio=tres nube.

Julia Santoli is a Brooklyn-based artist and experimental musician. Creating immersive and precarious environments with voice, feedback, electronics, and installation, her work deals with intergenerational hauntings and reclamation through the body.

Lineup:
Cecilia Lopez – Composition, Electronics
Jean Carla Rodea
Julia Santoli

William Hooker: The Great Migration

What: Through music, narrative, and dance, William Hooker tells the story of African-American migration from 1935 to 1950.
When: Thursday, April 5, 2018, 8pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $20 Online, $25 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: https://roulette.org/event/william-hooker-the-great-migration/

Brooklyn, NY — Avant-garde percussionist William Hooker offers a multi-disciplinary contemplation and exploration of African-American migration from the American South to points north during the years 1935–1950. The Great Migration features music (with veteran performers like William Parker and David Soldier), dance, video, and narratives from 97-year-old Alton Brooks and Nannie Lampkin, who experienced this historical period firsthand.

A body of uninterrupted work beginning in the mid-seventies defines William Hooker as one of the most important composers and players in jazz. As bandleader, Hooker has fielded ensembles in an incredibly diverse array of configurations. Each collaboration has brought a serious investigation of his compositional agenda and the science of the modern drum kit. As a player, Hooker has long been known for the persuasive power of his relationship with his instrument. His work is frequently grounded in a narrative context. Whether set against a silent film or anchored by a poetic theme, Hooker brings dramatic tension and human warmth to avant-garde jazz. His ability to find fertile ground for moving music in a variety of settings that obliterate genre distinctions offers a much-needed statement of social optimism in the the arts.

Lineup:
William Hooker – Percussion
Ras Moshe – Reeds, Flute
Eriq Robinson – Electronics, Images
Mark Hennen – Piano
Goussy Celestin – Narrator, Dance
William Parker – Bass
David Soldier – Violin, Banjo
Ava Mendoza – Guitar
Alton Brooks & Nannie Lampkin – Primary Narratives