Author: Kerry

Mixology Festival 2018: Circuit Breakers: Gotye Presents a Tribute to Jean-Jacques Perrey

What: Gotye assembles the Ondioline Orchestra, a new ensemble dedicated to reviving the spirit of the early French synthesizer.
When: Tuesday, February 13, 2018, 9pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $25 Online $30 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org // (917) 267-0368

Brooklyn, NY — The opening night of Mixology Festival 2018: Circuit Breakers features 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. Performed in the round, with direct sightlines into the intricate playing of the instrument, the program will offer a rare opportunity for fans of early electronic pop music to celebrate Perrey’s inventive studio work in a live environment.

Jean-Jacques Perrey (1929-2016) was an alternative pop visionary, a pioneer of rhythmic tape editing techniques, and a virtuoso of the rare French electronic musical instrument, the Ondioline. Gotye, a long-time Perrey fan and a budding Ondiolinist, has assembled the Ondioline Orchestra, a new ensemble dedicated to reviving the spirit of this rare and unusually expressive early synthesizer. The ensemble features thereminist/keyboardist Rob Schwimmer, vintage synth specialist and ex-Psychedelic Furs member Joe McGinty, as well as members of acclaimed alternative band Zammuto. Perrey’s best-known songs will be celebrated alongside ultra rare pieces co-written with Angelo Badalamenti and Billy Goldenberg in an eclectic set juxtaposing Perrey’s joyful and boisterous pop with more reflective work spanning three decades of his career. Ondioline Orchestra perform all sounds live, including Perrey’s signature sample sounds, classic Moog patches, and a rich variety of Ondioline timbres on fully-restored original instruments.

Wally De Backer, better known by his stage name Gotye, has wandered many and varied paths in over 20 years making music. From playing drums and singing in Australian rock’n’rollin’ three-piece The Basics in places as far flung as Pannawonica, Western Australia and Shibuya, Japan, to writing, recording and releasing his first Gotye albums entirely independently (including hand-making the packaging for hundreds of individual records), he is happy to be described as “hands on” with his projects. In 2006, his self-released second album Like Drawing Blood was voted by influential Australian radio station Triple J’s listenership as its favorite longplayer of that year. In 2012 his album Making Mirrors won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and the single from it, “Somebody That I Used To Know,” was awarded Record of the Year.

Lineup:

Wally De Backer – Ondioline, Vocals, Percussion
Rob Schwimmer – Ondioline, Theremin, Moog, Keyboards
Joe McGinty – Moog and Keyboards
Sean Dixon – Drummer
Nick Oddy – Guitar
Jacob Silver – Bass

About Mixology:

Mixology Festival 2018: Circuit Breakers presents four evenings and seven musical artists and ensembles who bend, blend, and extend electronic instruments and tools toward new realms of creative communication. Surreal songs, ritual roustings, radiophonic phenomena, and a multimedia mélange will incite, inspire, and inhabit. Active for over 25 years, Roulette’s Mixology Festival celebrates new and unusual uses of technology in music and the media arts. Primarily a snapshot of current activity, Mixology strives to reflect both the history and trends of innovation that impact the Zeitgeist.

Curated by David Weinstein, with consultation from Susan Karabush, Ruth Kahn, Kerry Santullo, and Mia Wendel-DiLallo.

Tuesday, February 13
Mixology Festival 2018: Circuit Breakers: Gotye Presents a Tribute to Jean-Jacques Perrey

Wednesday, February 14
Mixology Festival 2018 2018: Circuit Breakers: Daisy Press + Nick Hallett // Rachika S

Thursday, February 15
Mixology Festival 2018: Circuit Breakers: Causings // Plan 23

Friday, February 16
Mixology Festival 2018: Circuit Breakers: Jantar // GAIAMAMOO

Exceptet Winter Concert: Premieres by Sarah Goldfeather, Brendon Randall-Myers, Matt Evans

What: World premieres from composers Brendon Randall-Myers, Matt Evans, and Sarah Goldfeather, performed by Exceptet.
When: Thursday, February 8, 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 – New York-based ensemble Exceptet performs three brand new works — Episodic Memory by Brendon Randall-Myers, which draws on brain processes regarding trauma; The mesh by Matt Evans, inspired by human’s impact on the environment; and Mouth Full of Ears by Exceptet’s very own violinist Sarah Goldfeather, which illustrates contemporary political discourse in a musical manner.

Episodic Memory by Brendon Randall-Myers is a 25-minute work in three sections that reflects the way our brains process trauma and learn from mistakes. The first section starts with subtly shifting polyrhythms that emerge from the beat patterns of microtonal inflections of a single pitch, which are gradually picked up, articulated, and elaborated on directly by the ensemble. The second section abruptly focuses these rhythms to a 16th-note ostinato played at an extremely fast speed, high register, and loud volume. The third and final section begins with extremely quiet multiphonic trills traded around the ensemble, which gradually coalesce into a huge, oscillating mass of sound built on the same pitch that opened the piece. Randall-Myers was a 2017 Roulette Artist-in-Residence.

The mesh by Matt Evans is a 20-minute work in three continuous parts that unpacks the questions surrounding human impact on modern ecology in our recently defined epoch the “anthropocene” through musical abstraction and representation. Three distinct sections of the piece will represent the three basic states of Timothy Morton’s philosophy of Dark Ecology: “darkness as depression, darkness as uncanny, and darkness as sweetness.” The piece draws inspiration from the earth and the sublime through a musical topography of chromatic polyrhythmic dissonances, gradients of noise, and drones of ultimate stillness.

Mouth Full of Ears by Sarah Goldfeather is a 5-minute song featuring a simple melody that builds in orchestration and intensity. The text describes a person who cannot or does not think or speak for themselves — one who simply regurgitates information he or she hears without any synthesis, and on whom it is easy to project your own opinions and designs. An archetype prevalent on both sides of the today’s political spectrum, where so many default to a stance without critical thought, thus creating an even greater rift between us and near impossibility of sensible discourse.

About Exceptet
Founded on the rag-tag instrumentation of Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat, New York-based Exceptet is an ensemble with “vast emotional range and onomatopoetic charm” (I Care If You Listen) dedicated to commissioning today’s most compelling emerging composers. Exceptet recently performed on the Ecstatic Music Festival as part of the MATA Interval Series, The Times Two Series in Boston, the Queens New Music Festival, The UPenn Composers Guild, and has been showcased several times on WQXR. The group has commissioned new works from a wide range of composers, including Scott Wollschleger, Matt Evans, Brendon Randall-Myers, Sarah Goldfeather, Fay Kueen Wang, Alex Weiser, Fjola Evans, Brooks Frederickson, Paul Kerekes, Brian Petuch, and Eric Shanfield. The ensemble also collaborated with Exceptet violinist Sarah Goldfeather’s indie folk-band, Goldfeather.

[DANCEROULETTE] Jessica Cook: Dog Flats

What: Jessica Cook’s Dog Flats is a study of objects, materials and movement pattern to produce sound and visual sculpture.
When: Tuesday + Wednesday, February 6 + 7, 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 – Dog Flats sees three women 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. Performers Katie Dean, Ayano Elson, and Jessica Cook obscure and expand audience sight line to alter the perceiving of sound and its relationship to movement. Rhythmic patterns are systematically built and deconstructed to amplify and ornament gesture and shape. The performers traverse through rigid dance constructs cut with improvisational scores centered around memory, desire, and hyper-emotion. Sculptural landscaping and transformation produce sonic textures that are threaded and perpetuated alongside Lillie De‘s light design.

Jessica Cook is a Brooklyn-based multi-disciplinary artist originally from Durham, NC She graduated from SUNY Purchase in 2005 with a BFA in modern dance performance. She has performed her work in Judson Memorial Church, New Museum, Spring Break Art Fair, Westway, Pieter Performance Space in LA, and others. Cook has performed in New York City for 12 years, most recently with Milka Djordjevich/Chris Peck, Kim Brandt, Phoebe Berglund, and Laurel Atwell, and frequently on Roulette’s stage.

Katie Dean is a performer and designer originally from Harrisonburg, Virginia. She has performed in New York with visual artists and choreographers Xavier Cha, Jennifer Harge, Megan Harrold/Inimois Dance, Ivy Baldwin Dance, Sam Kim, Julie Mayo, Melanie McLain, Hannah Walsh, and Rebekah Windmiller, in collaborative work with Heather Bregman, Jake Dibeler, and Alaina Stamatis, and in a video by Mia Lidofsky and Celia Rowlson-Hall. Dean is currently in process with Phoebe Berglund, Kim Brandt, Jessica Cook, Shannon Hummel/Cora Dance, and Nadia Tykulsker.

Ayano Elson is a choreographer and designer. She was born in Okinawa, Japan and is a 2018 Movement Research Van Lier Emerging Artist of Color Fellow. Her work has been presented by Center for Performance Research, Gibney Dance (Work Up), Movement Research at Judson Memorial Church, Roulette (lec/dem), and AUNTS at Arts@Renaissance, Mount Tremper Arts, and New Museum. As a dancer, Ayano has had the pleasure to perform in works by artists Bell + Clixby, Phoebe Berglund, Kim Brandt, Jessica Cook, devynn emory, and Steven Reker in places like BAAD!, BRIC, CATCH at the Invisible Dog, the Guggenheim Museum, the Kitchen, Lincoln Center, MoMA PS1, Movement Research at Judson Memorial Church, New Museum, PS122, Pioneer Works, Roulette, and SculptureCenter.

About [DANCEROULETTE]
Roulette’s ongoing [DANCEROULETTE] series reflects our commitment to presenting experimental dance that we’ve held since our founding in 1978, particularly in regards to the collaborative efforts of composers and choreographers exploring the relationship between sound and movement, choreography and composition.

Vincent Chancey and Newman Taylor Baker: 2/4/THREE

What: The story of two musicians (French horn + washboard), both born on February 4, punctuated by family tales rooted in research and DNA testing.
When: Saturday, February 3, 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 – At the heart of 2/4/THREE are two musicians, Vincent Chancey and Newman Taylor Baker, in deep exploration of their instruments of choice—the French horn and the washboard, respectively. The evening will offer the first look at the work-in-progress performance, moving through original solo, duo, and ensemble pieces, occasionally punctuated by the choreography, spoken text, and audio visuals and rounded out with guitar and bass. The evening is also a birthday celebration for three musicians friends who share(d) the same birthday — Chancey, Taylor Baker, and John Stubblefield, who passed away from cancer in 2005. With an ensemble cast including Tomeka Reid on cello, Chancey and Taylor Baker will delve into story, fact, mystery, question, and discovery pulled from intimate family history.

Native Chicagoan Vincent Chancey moved to New York after a completion of a bachelor of music degree from the Southern Illinois University School of Music in classical studies. He learned the French horn from Dale Clevenger, principal French horn of the Chicago Symphony. Chancey has performed with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Pan American Symphony, the Harlem Symphony, the One World Symphony, the Zephyr Woodwind Quintet, and the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam. He received a National Endowment for the Arts grant to study jazz French Horn with jazz horn pioneer, Julius Watkins. He was awarded a Meet the Composer Grant for workshops and concerts, and a Chamber Music America/FACE French American Jazz Exchange Grant for a collaboration with French guitarist, Serge Pesce.

Newman Taylor Baker is a master percussionist known for his solo drum set project, Singin’ Drums, and Washboard XT, his current pursuit of 21st century music for the washboard. He started on the washboard in 2010 when working with the Ebony Hillbillies. Taylor Baker plays the washboard like a drum set, placing the instrument in his lap and using prepared shotgun shells on his each of his fingers. This year Newman adds the epithet “Washboard XT” to his name in the spirit of 19th century Black String bands players. Baker toured with his Washboard XT Szczecin to five cities in Poland and to three in Japan. Other appearances took place at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Washboard Festival in Logon, Ohio and New York’s Arts for Art. Singin’ Drums is Newman’s enhanced, pitch-specific drum set configuration that has allowed him to develop a broad repertoire of music for solo drum set. This music can be heard on Drum Suite Life and The NYFA Collection on Innova. Baker was awarded a NYFA Music Fellowship and Meet The Composer Grant for this project.

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.

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.