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Category: Press Releases

Gary Lucas: The Films of Curtis Harrington

What: Avant-garde guitarist Gary Lucas accompanies the short films of queer cinema artist Curtis Harrington.
When: Friday, February 2, 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 $25 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org // (917) 267-0368

Brooklyn, NY – On the heels of last January’s world premiere of Gary Lucas’ solo guitar score accompanying Orson Welles‘ surreal silent comedy Too Much Johnson, the intrepid guitarist returns to Roulette to highlight the works of oft-overlooked West Coast experimentalist Curtis Harrington.

Considered one of the godfathers of New Queer Cinema, along with friend and collaborator Kenneth Anger, California-bred Curtis Harrington is best known for his fantasy feature film Night Tide (1961) starring Dennis Hopper — which led to work with Roger Corman and American International Pictures on such bizarre genre fare as Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet and Queen of Blood, and later quasi-mainstream horror films such as Games with Simone Signoret, Who Slew Auntie Roo, and The Killer Bees, as well as the widely-loved television series The Twilight Zone. Harrington’s early surrealist short films, beginning with Fall of the House of Usher (1948), were created during his high school years. His subsequent short films Fragment of Seeing (1946), Picnic (1948), and The Assignation (1953) are in a class by themselves, widely considered to be some of the most elegant experimental cinema ever committed to celluloid. Harrington kept company with a wide circle of cutting-edge LA cultural outsiders, including Kenneth Anger, Forrest J. Ackerman, Maya Deren, John Gilmore, Marjorie Cameron, and Orson Welles. In 2013, Drag City published Curtis Harrington’s memoir, Nice Guys Don’t Work in Hollywood.

Hailed as “one of the best and most original guitarists in America” by Rolling Stone, Gary Lucas has released over 30 acclaimed albums in a variety of genres. Lucas is a pioneer of  live film scoring, beginning with his 1989 score for the German Expressionist film The Golem (1920). He has composed ten live soundtracks to date for both silent and sound films, including the Spanish Dracula (1931), Luis Bunuel’s El Angel Exterminador (1964), and Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr.  A Grammy-nominated songwriter and composer, Lucas has performed in over 40 countries and at international festivals and venues including the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center, the Jerusalem Film Festival, the American Film Institute in Maryland, the Havana Film Festival, and more.

[RESIDENCY] Lucie Vítková: Spectacle

What: Lucie Vítková‘s solo performance incorporates lights, choreography, and manipulation of water and wind for sonic effect.
When: Saturday, January 27, 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

Brooklyn, NY – For Roulette’s first residency performance of 2018, rising Czech composer Lucie Vítková presents Spectacle, a one-hour solo piece incorporating sound, noise, music, movement, and show specific to Roulette’s theatre space. Drawing inspiration from the construction and physicality of hichiriki (double reed Japanese flute), Japanese Gagaku notation, ethnomusicology, Michael Jackson, and environmental performance practice, Vítková will incorporate scores for lights, choreographies for sounds, and manipulation of water and wind for sonic effect. In April 2017, Roulette commissioned Vítková’s OPERA, a piece for instrumentalists singing about utopian concepts in the language of Morse code.

Lucie Vítková is a composer, improviser and performer (accordion, hichiriki, voice, tap dance) from the Czech Republic. During her studies of composition at Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Brno (CZ), she was a visiting scholar at Royal Conservatory in The Hague (NL), California Institute of the Arts (USA), Universität der Künste in Berlin (DE), and most recently at Columbia University in New York City with Professor George E. Lewis. Her compositions focus on sonification (compositions based on abstract models derived from physical objects), while her improvisation practice explores characteristics of discrete spaces through the interaction between sound and movement. In her recent work, she is interested in the musical legacy of Morse Code and the social-political aspects of music in relation to everyday life. She has been nominated on 2017 Herb Alpert Awards in Arts in category of Music and she has put together two ensembles – NYC Constellation Ensemble (focused on musical behavior) and OPERA ensemble (for singing instrumentalists). During the Mentor / Protégé Residency in Tokyo (JP), she studied hichiriki with Hitomi Nakamura and has been a member of the Columbia University Gagaku Ensemble. As an accordion player, she collaborated with New York based TAK Ensemble, S.E.M. ensemble, String Noise, Du.0 , Argento Ensemble, Ghost Ensemble, and Wet Ink.

Spectacle /ˈspek.tə.kəl/ – an unusual or unexpected event or situation that attracts attention, interest or disapproval.

Lucie Vítková – Composer, Performer, Choreographer; Hichiriki, Voice, Accordion, Synthesizer, Wind, Water, Movement, Tap Dance

Audrey Chen and Phil Minton: Voices

What: Cellist + vocalist Audrey Chen and her collaborator Phil Minton explore the depths of the human voice as instrument.
When: Saturday, January 20, 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

Brooklyn, NY – Berlin-based vocalist + cellist Audrey Chen and her collaborator Phil Minton plumb the depths of the most inherent and bodily instrument — the voice — producing improvisations are fearless, fragile, hungry, passionate, riotous, ululating and animalistic, yet ultimately human. Focusing primarily on the interplay between the uttered sounds of the mouth and vocal chords, the duo will express, pronounce, and intensely articulate (in their fashion) the many nuanced shades of their individual and collaborative conditions. Audrey Chen and Phil Minton have been performing as a duo for more than a decade with concerts and tours across Europe, China, Argentina and Brazil. Their duo album, By the Stream, was released by SUBROSA in 2013.

Over the past 15 years, Audrey Chen has focused predominantly on her solo work, joining together the extended and inherent vocabularies of the cello, voice, and analog electronics. In the last few years, she has shifted back towards the exploration of the voice as a primary instrument, delving even more deeply into her own version of narrative and non-linear storytelling. She derives her sound material in continuous process, championing the “in-between” and over looked. Regardless of instrument, her mode of experimentation touches both the abstractly beautiful and the aggressively unsettling, creating a kind of curiously imagined architecture, non-prosaic song or ritual that reaches beyond gravity or language.

Phil Minton comes from Torquay in the UK. He played trumpet and sang with the Mike Westbrook Band in the early 1960s, then in dance and rock bands in Europe for the latter part of the decade. He returned to England in 1971, rejoining Westbrook, and was involved in many of his projects until the mid 1980s. For most of the past forty years, Minton has been working as a improvising singer in groups, orchestras and situations.  He has a quartet with Veryan Weston, Roger Turner, and John Butcher, and ongoing duos with all the above. Recently, after a long break, he has been involved in several of American composer Bob Ostertag’s projects. Since the eighties, his Feral Choir, where he voice-conducts workshops and concerts for Anyone Who Wants to Sing, has performed in over twenty countries.

Kit Fitzgerald and Peter Gordon: Into the Hot, Out of the Cool

What: Large-scale video paintings by Kit Fitzgerald accompanied by six-piece musical ensemble directed by Peter Gordon.
When: Friday, January 19, 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

Brooklyn, NY – Roulette kicks off its Winter 2018 season with long-standing collaborative duo Peter Gordon (keyboard, sax, electronics) and Kit Fitzgerald (video) presenting Into the Hot, Out of the Cool. The performance will feature large-scale video paintings by Fitzgerald accompanied by a six-piece musical ensemble directed by Gordon. Fitzgerald’s visual imagery will include video drawings, animations, and camera imagery—mixed and processed live—combining early analog and current digital technology. The dialogue between the early and the contemporary video aesthetic is part of Fitzgerald’s signature look and is at the heart of the Hot/Cool dialogue. Into the Hot, Out of the Cool is a new work that marks the 35th year of collaboration between Kit Fitzgerald and Peter Gordon, a pioneering duo incorporating live video and musical performance. Fitzgerald and Gordon have presented their work at Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival, The Kitchen, La Mama, as well as internationally.

Kit Fitzgerald has collaborated with composers Max Roach, Peter Gordon, Ned Sublette, and Ryuichi Sakamoto; choreographers Donald Byrd, Bebe Miller, and Bill T. Jones; poets Sekou Sundiata and Bob Holman, and theater companies The Wooster Group and The Talking Band. She directs award-winning documentaries on art and culture, music videos, dance videos, video installations, live performance, and album covers. Her work is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art and has been featured twice in the Whitney Biennial. Her work has been commissioned by Tokyo Broadcasting, Fuji TV, SONY Japan, and Northern Netherlands Theatre. Fitzgerald is the recipient of prizes at international film and television festivals and awards from The Rockefeller Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and Japan Foundation. Her work is distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York. Fitzgerald is Professor of New Media at Concordia College-New York.

Peter Gordon moved to New York in 1975, where his Love of Life Orchestra first gained attention at downtown venues such as The Kitchen, CBGB, Max’s Kansas City, and the Mudd Club. An early proponent of the recording studio as a compositional tool, Gordon produced recordings for LOLO, as well as Robert Ashley, Arthur Russell, Rhys Chatham, Laurie Anderson, Jill Kroesen, David Van Tieghem, and “Blue” Gene Tyranny. He was music producer for Robert Ashley’s video opera Perfect Lives, as well as the recent Spanish-language version, Vidas Perfectas (presented at the Whitney Museum in 2014). A friend and frequent collaborator of the late Arthur Russell, Gordon has recently been touring Arthur Russell’s INSTRUMENTALS at several international festivals. Gordon is Professor of Music at Bloomfield College.

Roulette Announces Winter 2018 Season

Brooklyn, NY — Roulette is pleased to announce the release of their winter season from January 16 through March 20, 2018.

Visionary opera-theatre and music-theatre festival PROTOTYPE ushers in the new year with two nights of Stranger Love, a love story inspired by the writings of Plato and Octavio Paz, composed by Dylan Mattingly and scored for Contemporaneous; followed by Arthur Russell affiliate Peter Gordon and video artist Kit Fitzgerald premiering Into the Hot, Out of the Cool, featuring a new musical ensemble directed by Gordon coupled with Fitzgerald’s video drawings, animations, and camera imagery, mixed and processed live. Next up, Audrey Chen and guest collaborator plumb the depths of the voice as the most inherent and bodily instrument, producing improvisations that are fearless, fragile, and passionate. The month of January concludes with the start of Roulette’s winter & spring artist residency program, as Lucie Vítková presents Spectacle, a solo performance merging the construction and physicality of hichiriki and Japanese Gagaku notation with a focus on ethnomusicology and environmental practice.

February picks up with former Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas scoring the films of oft-overlooked West Coast experimentalist Curtis Harrington; followed by 2/4/THREE, a deep exploration of the French horn and the washboard from Vincent Chancey and Newman Baker, respectively. The first of two [DANCEROULETTE] performances this month comes from Jessica Cook, as Dog Flats sees three women (Ayano Elson, Katie Dean, and Cook) using objects, materials, and movement patterns to create a live multi-layered sound score amidst personal investigation to architecture, work/labor, disaster, and historic iconography. Later in the month, Chris Ferris & Dancers, known for its fearless action, physical indulgence, and elegant design, give the world premiere of If This Were Not Real followed by selections of Rampaging Light. The 2018 edition of Mixology Festival, dubbed Circuit Breakers, will comprise of four evenings and seven musical artists and ensembles who bend, blend, and extend electronic instruments and tools toward new realms of creative communication. The opening night will be an intimate celebration of the artist Jean-Jacques Perrey and the Ondioline, an early electronic keyboard instrument invented by Frenchman Georges Jenny, organized and performed by Australian pop artist Wally De Backer aka Gotye. Subsequent Mixology performances includes surreal songs, ritual roustings, and radiophonic phenomena from Daisy Press & Nick Hallett, Rachika S, Causings, Plan 23, Jantar, and GAIAMAMOO. February continues with world premiere of The Goddess, a 1934 Chinese silent film accompanied by a score from Min Xiao-Fen, with Rez Abbasi on guitar and Min playing multiple Chinese plucked instruments with vocals; a residency performance from Amirtha Kidambi and and her quartet Elder Ones; and the NYC premiere of the country’s strongest upcoming compositional voices — Kristina Wolfe, Adam Roberts, Shelley Washington, and Scott Wollschleger — given by Bearthoven. Other monthly highlights include Joe Diebes and BOTCH ensemble performing two nights of oyster, a new sung-spoken opera based on Alan Lomax‘s folk song science in the lead up to the information age; and Exceptet presenting three new works by Brendon Randall-Myers, Matt Evans, and their violinist Sarah Goldfeather.

In like a lion, out like a lamb — March kicks off with Bobby Previte’s Rhapsody Band performing a new narrative song cycle incorporating written music, improvisation, and vocals, featuring Nels Cline, Zeena Parkins, and Jen Shyu; followed by Four Directions, an improvised performance in combination of solos, duos, quartets from Jin Hi Kim with Elliott Sharp, William Parker, and Hamid Drake. Fans of avant jazz will rejoice in performances from Aaron Burnett and the Big Machine and Will Mason’s Electroacoustic Quintet, while intermedia audiences will enjoy a mini-festival highlighting Asian artists and composers working in transmedia and computerized instruments organized by media artist Angie Eng and featuring Atau Tanaka and Carole Kim. Also in the works — a dream lineup pays tribute to the life and music of beloved guitarist John Abercrombie in a concert underscoring his legacy and influences, with proceeds benefiting the John Abercrombie Scholarship Fund at SUNY Purchase. Lastly, the winter season concludes with three nights of String Orchestra of Brooklyn’s String Theories Festival. Opening night will be an ambitious collaborative exchange between the orchestra and avant-punk violin duo String Noise performing works by Eric Lyon accentuated by drummer Greg Saunier. The second night calls upon the feminist writings of Margaret Atwood and the protest song as an artistic genre for performances by The Rhythm Method. The final evening features meditative works for string orchestra, making use of drones, masses of sound, improvisation, and time-based structures woven together into an evening-length sound installation. Program highlights from the final night include Empire by Tony Conrad, Tuning Meditations by Pauline Oliveros, Twenty Three by John Cage, and Stridulations by Zach Layton.

ACFNY Presents: Studio Dan / Breaking News

What: US premiere performance of commissioned pieces by George Lewis + Oxana Omelchuk from Austrian ensemble Studio Dan.
When: Sunday, December 3, 2017, 8:00pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $25/20 Online: $20/15 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: General Admission $20, Members/Students/Seniors $15, $25/20 Tickets at the door

Brooklyn, NY – Austrian ensemble Studio Dan presents an evening of US premieres and performances of commissioned pieces by George Lewis and Oxana Omelchuk, followed by works by Johannes Kreidler, John Zorn, and others.

The key work for the concert is George Lewis’ new piece commissioned by the group, followed by another commissioned piece by Belarusian composer Oxana Omelchuk, featuring two solo trombones. Both pieces will be premiered in October during the 50th edition of musikprotokoll held in Graz, Austria. The second half of the program will be dedicated a collection of short pieces for smaller ensembles, including Johannes Kreidler’s concept piece “Charts Music,” composed with the aid of stock exchange and trading charts.

Founded in 2005 for the first JazzWerkstatt Wien festival, Studio Dan started as big band, but has since morphed to perform in various permutations, depending on the project. The group operates on the borders between diverse subgenres of contemporary music: improvisation, new music, jazz, and (art) rock, and others. Studio Dan curates and produces new programs, concert series, and recordings, working alone or in cooperation with large institutions. In 2016, Studio Dan brought new programs to several internationally-renowned stages as Wien Modern, Kampnagel Hamburg, musikprotokoll graz, and the Tagen für Neue Musik in Zurich. The ensemble also presented works Anthony Braxton, George Lewis, Cornelius Cardew, George Crumb, and others during a  four-concert series at Vienna’s Porgy & Bess. Past guest soloists and collaborations with Studio Dan include Vinko Globokar, Elliott Sharp, Michel Doneda, and Friedrich Cerha.

Program:
Johannes Kreidler (1980) – Charts Music
George Lewis (1952) – New Work
Oxana Omelchuk (1975) – wow and flutter
Caitlin Smith (1983) – Wie schön ist es zu leben
Christoph Walder (1967) – vozmozhnost
John Zorn (1953) – Ceremonial Magic

Phill Niblock: 6 Hours of Music and Film

What: Downtown legend and intermedia artist Phill Niblock presents his annual 6-hour Winter Solstice concert.
When: Thursday, December 21, 2017, 6pm—12am
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $25/20 Online $20/15 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: General Admission $20, Members/Students/Seniors $15, $25/20 Tickets at the door

Brooklyn, NY – As the longest night of the year unfolds and the journey of our planet nears the point when Winter commences in the Northern Hemisphere, Phill Niblock’s stages his annual Winter Solstice concert for the 7th consecutive year in Roulette’s Atlantic Avenue theatre space. Starting at 6:00 PM, the performance will comprise of six sublime hours of acoustic and electronic music and mixed media film and video in a live procession that charts the movement of our planet and the progress of ourselves through art and performance at its maximal best.

Niblock’s minimalistic drone approach to composition and music was inspired by the musical and artistic activities of New York in the 1960s, from the art of Mark Rothko, Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd, and Robert Morris to the music of John Cage and Morton Feldman. Niblock’s music is an exploration of sound textures created by multiple tones in very dense, often atonal tunings (generally microtonal in conception) performed in long durations.

Phill Niblock is an intermedia artist using music, film, photography, video, and computers as his medium. Since the mid-1960s, he has been making music and intermedia performances which have been shown at numerous venues around the world, including The Museum of Modern Art, The Kitchen, The Institute of Contemporary Art in London, and World Music Institute at Merkin Hall. Since 1985, Niblock has been the director of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York where he has been an artist and member since 1968. He is the producer of Music and Intermedia presentations at Experimental Intermedia since 1973 (with 1000 performances to date!) and the curator of EI’s XI Records label. Niblock’s music is available on the XI, Moikai, Mode and Touch labels. He is the recipient of the prestigious 2014 Foundation for Contemporary Arts John Cage award.

Vicky Chow & Ben Reimer Duo: Softcore

What: Vicky Chow & Ben Reimer perform works by Canadian composers Nicole Lizée and Vincent Ho, plus Christopher Cerrone.
When: Saturday, December 16, 2017, 8:00pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $25/20 Online $20/15 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: General Admission $20, Members/Students/Seniors $15, $25/20 Tickets at the door

Brooklyn, NY – In lieu of her aforementioned performance as X88, pianist Vicky Chow will now perform as a duo with percussionist Ben Reimer. On tap for the evening – newly commissioned solo and duo works with multimedia by Canadian composers Nicole Lizée and Vincent Ho, as well as a new arrangement of “Double Happiness” from Rome Prize-winner Christopher Cerrone.

Montreal-based percussionist Ben Reimer and Vancouver-born Brooklyn-based pianist Vicky Chow met several years ago at the Bang on a Can Summer Institute at Mass MOCA. In 2016, Chow and Reimer united as a duo by commissioning Canadian composers Nicole Lizée and Vincent Ho. The two made their debut performance in January 2017 at the International PuSH Festival in Vancouver, co-presented by Music on Main, which featured John Luther Adams’ “Four Thousand Holes” and the premiere performances of Lizée’s “Softcore” and Ho’s “Kickin’ It!” After a successful debut, the duo is now a fully fledged commissioning, recording, and touring project.

Canadian pianist Vicky Chow has been described as “new star of new music”  by Los Angeles Times and “one of our era’s most brilliant pianists” by Pitchfork. Chow is the pianist for Bang on a Can All-Stars, X88, Chow / Reimer Duo, Grand Band, New Music Detroit, and others. Her sophomore album A O R T A on New Amsterdam Records was hailed as “imaginative” and “compelling” by I Care If You Listen and “a triumph of curation” by Second Inversion. In 2013, she gave the North American premiere of Steve Reich’s work “Piano Counterpoint,” the world premiere of John Zorn’s new piano trio “The Aristos,” and an evening-length work by Tristan Perich for solo piano and 40 channel 1-bit electronics titled Surface Image, presented at Roulette.  Vicky Chow is a Yamaha Artist.

Winnipeg-born percussionist Ben Reimer became captivated by the drum set at an early age. Now based in Montreal, Reimer has established himself as a leading figure in contemporary drumset performance, commissioning solo works such as “Ringer” by Nicole Lizée, “Full Grown” by Scott Edward Godin, and “Train Set” by Eliot Britton. Reimer is a member of Architek Percussion in Montreal and is a Sabian Cymbals, Yamaha Canada and Vic Firth artist.

UnCaged Toy Piano Festival: Automotoy

What: A variety of works incorporating mechanical musical instruments with live performers and John Cage‘s Amplified Toy Pianos.
When: Wednesday, December 13, 2017, 8:00pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $25/20 Online $20/15 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: General Admission $20, Members/Students/Seniors $15, $25/20 Tickets at the door

Brooklyn, NY – Automotoy offers the rare chance to hear John Cage’s seminal Music for Amplified Toy Pianos as it was meant to be heard — on a toy piano! — complimented by performances from Margaret Leng Tan, Phyllis Chen, Adam Tendler, Tristan McKay, and Alexa Dexa. Originally founded in 2007 by pianist and composer Phyllis Chen, the UnCaged Toy Piano is a composition competition designed to expand the music for toy piano. Given the large number of submissions received through the years, UnCaged Toy Piano has since become a biennial festival hosting three different events in New York City in December. The festival premieres many of these new works and curates a three-day event, showcasing other artists, performers and makers who are using toys and toy pianos in new music.

Invented in 1872, the toy piano was mostly considered an educational toy for children, until John Cage’s seminal work, Suite For Toy Piano (1947) single-handedly turned the toy piano into a concert instrument. In recent decades, a growing number of musicians and audience members have embraced this instrument for its fresh, unassuming yet quirky quality. With time, the UnCaged Toy Piano hopes to develop idiomatic repertoire for the instrument such that it becomes its own artistic entity, giving attention to a relatively unknown instrument with a unique sound and voice.

Dennis Russell Davies & Maki Namekawa: Celebrating Philip Glass

What: Two of Philip Glass‘ closest collaborators perform an all-Glass recital for two pianos and piano four-hands.
When: Saturday, December 9, 2017, 8:00pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $25/20 Online $20/15 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: General Admission $20, Members/Students/Seniors $15, $25/20 Tickets at the door

Brooklyn, NY – A late, great addition to Roulette’s fall season — two of Philip Glass‘ closest collaborators and friends, Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa, perform an all-Glass recital of music for two pianos and piano four-hands. The evening’s program features highlights from Glass’ impressive catalog, including the two-piano suite from Glass’ opera Les Enfants Terribles; a selection of music for piano-four hands including “The Chase” from Orphée; the New York premiere of the musical interlude from The Voyage and “Stokes,” as well as Glass’ dynamic “Four Movements for Two Pianos.”

Dennis Russell Davies has had a distinguished career as both a pianist and a conductor in both the US and in Europe. Founder of the American Composers Orchestra, he has held esteemed positions with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Bruckner Orchester Linz, and the Stuttgart Opera. Beginning with Glass’ “Violin Concerto No.1” which premiered with the ACO at Carnegie Hall in 1987, Davies has played a large role in bringing Glass’ concert works to the stage as both a pianist and conductor, including arranging the commissions of ten of the eleven extant Glass symphonies. Dennis Russell Davies was born in Toledo, Ohio and studied piano and conducting at the Juilliard School. He is Professor Emeritus of Orchestral Conducting at Salzburg’s Mozarteum, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the French Ministry of Culture has appointed him “Commandeur des Arts et Lettres.”

Renowned piano soloist Maki Namekawa has the distinct honor of recording Glass’s complete piano études, released on Orange Mountain Music in 2014. Her forthcoming solo piano album of the complete soundtrack to the film MISHIMA is forthcoming on OMM Records. Namekawa has toured regularly for years with Philip Glass, presenting his Complete Piano Études in cities around the world, most recently including the Barbican Centre in London. Following studies at the Kunitachi Music University in Tokyo, Namekawa pursued advanced work under Pierre-Laurent Aimard at the Musikhochschule in Cologne as well as studies with Werner Genuit and Kaya Han at the Musikhochschule Karlsruhe and Stefan Litwin in Saarbrücken. Namekawa has been performing the music of Philip Glass with Dennis Russell Davies since 2003.