Roulette co-founder Jim Staley returns to the stage with some of his long-running collaborators for a special evening of improvisation.
Jim Staley trombone
Ikue Mori electronics
Zeena Parkins harp, electronics
A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing.
Jim Staley is a trombonist and composer who has resided in New York City since 1978, where he has shaped and forever changed the experimental music scene. His work has been primarily working with improvisation, crossing genres freely between post-modern classical music and avant-garde jazz. He has collaborated for many years with other highly experienced improvisers, both dancers and musicians, including Sally Silvers, Pooh Kaye, Simone Forti, Ikue Mori, Davey Williams, Shelley Hirsch, Phoebe Legere, John Zorn and many others. Staley’s recording projects include Blind Pursuits with Phoebe Legere and Borah Bergman; Mumbo Jumbo (different trio combinations with Wayne Horvitz, Elliott Sharp, Shelley Hirsch, Samm Bennett, Ikue Mori, Bill Frisell, Fred Frith and John Zorn); Jim Staley’s Don Giovanni, with Mori, Davey Williams, Zeena Parkins and Tenko, plus several more.
After graduating from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Staley enlisted in the U.S Army, where he spent three years playing trombone in military bands. While stationed in Berlin from 1971 to 1973, he became inspired by the collectivist, envelope-pushing spirit of the German avant-garde music scene. After his service period, he returned to Champaign-Urbana, where he was tasked with caretaking for a family property. Staley immediately turned the property into a space where artists and students could live, create, and experiment at little to no cost—affectionately coined “Staley Manor”—and where he ultimately met Roulette’s co-founders before moving to New York in 1978 and establishing Roulette. In 1991, Staley founded Einstein Records. Staley received the 2005 Susan E. Kennedy Memorial Award, the 2012 ASCAP award, and was named a 2018 Champion of New Music by the American Composers’ Forum for his years in support of artists. He was the Artistic Director of Roulette for 45 years, where he is now a member of the Board.
Ikue Mori moved from Tokyo to New York in 1977. She started playing drums and soon formed the generative no-wave band DNA with Arto Lindsay. In the mid 1980s Mori started to employ drum machines in the context of improvised music. Since the 1990s, she has collaborated with musicians and artists throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, while continuing to produce and record her own music. Beginning in 2000, Mori started using a laptop computer to expand her vocabulary; not only playing sounds, but creating and controlling the visual work as well. Commissioners of Mori’s work include the Montalvo Arts Center, Südwestrundfunk German radio program, Relâche, the Mary Flagler Charitable Trust, and Sharjah Art Foundation in United Arab Emirates. Mori was a 2022 MacArthur Fellow and has received numerous other honors, including the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists (2006), a Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction (1999), a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship (2000), and she participated in the Ucross Foundation Residency Program (2005). Ikue has lead workshops and lectures at the University of Gothenburg, Dartmouth College, New England Conservatory, Mills Collage, Stanford University, and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Zeena Parkins New York-based electro-acoustic composer/improviser/educator, Zeena Parkins is a pioneer of contemporary harp practices. Through the use of expanded playing techniques, object preparations, and electronic processing she has helped to re-situate and re-define the instrument’s capacities. Concurrently, Parkins self-designed a series of one-of-a-kind electric instruments. She leans into the harp’s physical limitations pushing into its impossibilities. In her compositions, Parkins utilizes collections, lists, recombination, historic proximities, geography, tactility, and movement. Sonic presence, history, and personality is revealed in feedback, overtones, timbral shifts, gestural intervals, perception, and residues. Honors include a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Composition, a Foundation of Contemporary Arts Fellowship to Artists, a Doris Duke Artist Award, and three New York Performance Awards for her work with dance (“The Bessie”). Parkins holds the Darius Milhaud Chair in Composition, at Mills College.
