Author: Kerry

ACFNY Moving Sounds Festival: Ars Electronica / Eyebeam Edition: MSHR / YATTA / BR-Laser

What: The opening night of Austrian Cultural Forum New York‘s annual festival of music, visual media and aesthetic dialogue.
When: Sunday, October 15, 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 – Following Suzanne Ciani’s triumphant concert last fall, Roulette welcomes back Austrian Cultural Forum New York’s Moving Sounds Festival, an annual international festival of music, visual media and aesthetic dialogue that features emerging and pioneering artists focused on electronically generated music, engaging improvisation, and cutting edge technology. This year’s festival is co-curated by Austrian electronic arts center Ars Electronica and Brooklyn-based nonprofit technology studio Eyebeam. The opening night of the festival, taking place on Sunday, features audiovisual experimentalists BR-Laser, MSHR, and Yatta.

BR-Laser is an engineer, visual sound artist and cofounder of Kunstverein NewJörg Vienna. He is a regular guest at international experimental music festivals, music fairs and soldering workshops, with performance highlights including Ars Electonica (Linz), Superbooth (Berlin), Modular Days (Barcelona), and Machines in Music (New York). MSHR is the art collective of Birch Cooper and Brenna Murphy. The duo build and explore systems to reveal pathways toward ecstatic sensory experience, working at the intersection of digital sculpture, analog circuitry and ceremonial performance. Their physical projects revolve around analog light-audio feedback systems built from macro-arrangements of our sculptural synthesizers. On the virtual side, MSHR weaves computer generated portraits of inter-dimensional entities and psychedelic realms. These physical and virtual pursuits inform each other deeply, unfolding a hyper-shape that houses both. YATTA is a Houston-born interdisciplinary artist, digipoet, and musician currently based in Brooklyn. Using incantations born of loop pedal drones, folk acoustics, and ecstatic beats, they alchemize and creolize jazz vocals with Krio cries to create music to lie down in.

The Austrian Cultural Forum New York is the main cultural embassy of the Republic of Austria in New York and the United States. With its architectural landmark building in Midtown Manhattan, ACFNY’s facilities include a multi-level gallery space, a theater, and its own library. Hosting more than 100 events annually, ACFNY is one of the most important places to encounter Austrian art, culture, and tradition for an American audience.

Tom Blancarte // Peter Evans: Being & Becoming

What: A new ensemble led by Peter Evans featuring three young virtuoso instrumentalists, plus a solo set from Tom Blancarte.
When: Wednesday, September 27,, 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 – Acclaimed trumpeter and composer Peter Evans debuts a new ensemble featuring some of the most creative and virtuosic of the new generation of players. Featuring Joel Ross on vibraphone, Jordan Morton on bass and Max Jaffe on drums, Being & Becoming marks a new chapter in Evans’ work as a player and composer. The evening will open with Tom Blancarte premiering a new piece for solo bass following the success of his new album, The Shortening of the Way.

Peter Evans is a trumpeter, improviser, and composer based in New York City. As part of a broad, hybridized scene of musical experimentation, Evans’ work cuts across a wide range of modern musical practices and traditions. Peter is committed to the simultaneously self-determining and collaborative nature of musical improvisation as a compositional tool, and works with an ever-expanding group of musicians and composers in the creation of new music. His primary groups as a leader are the Peter Evans Ensemble and Being & Becoming (with Joel Ross and Max Jaffe). He is a member of the cooperative groups Pulverize the Sound (with Mike Pride and Tim Dahl) and Rocket Science (with Evan Parker, Craig Taborn and Sam Pluta). Evans has released recordings on his own record label, More is More, since 2011.

For nearly a decade, bassist Tom Blancarte has been contributing a vivid palette of dark frequencies to New York’s creative music scene. A native of Austin, Texas, his formative years included a steady diet of fantasy and sci-fi novels and video games, and later on a total immersion in death and black metal. Accordingly, Blancarte has cultivated a demented and visceral instrumental practice that transcends the experimental bass canon and pushes improvisatory art to new extremes.

Lisa Mezzacappa: Glorious Ravage

What: Lisa Mezzacappa presents Glorious Ravage, an evening-length song cycle inspired by female explorers.
When: Thursday, October 12, 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 – San Francisco composer + bassist Lisa Mezzacappa presents Glorious Ravage, an immersive evening-length song cycle for a large ensemble of California improvisers with films commissioned from Bay Area experimental filmmakers. Glorious Ravage features original compositions by Mezzacappa, and takes as its inspiration the writings of female adventurers near the turn of the 20th century, who trekked to the wildest parts of the earth to discover, escape, and lose themselves.

Glorious Ravage is the product of extensive collaboration between Mezzacappa and four moving image artists—Konrad Steiner, Alfonso Alvarez, Kathleen Quillian, and Janis Crystal Lipzin—all significant figures in the Bay Area experimental film and video community for decades, working in video, animation and manipulated found and archival film footage. The ensemble features fourteen virtuoso instrumentalists, plus versatile Brooklyn vocalist Fay Victor.

Lisa Mezzacappa is a San Francisco Bay Area composer, bassist, bandleader and producer. Called “one of the most imaginative figures on the Bay Area creative jazz scene” by the San Jose Mercury News and “a Bay Area treasure” by KQED National Public Radio, she has been an active part of California’s vibrant experimental music community for more than 15 years. Mezzacappa’s activities as a composer and bandleader include ethereal chamber music, electro-acoustic works, avant-garde jazz, music for groups from duo to large ensemble, and collaborations with film, dance, sculpture and installation art. Recent projects include works inspired by noir crime fiction; scientific processes on micro and cosmic scales; Victorian lady adventurers; and vintage Italian science fiction comics. She has released her music on the New World, Clean Feed, NoBusiness, Leo, and NotTwo record labels, and has received support or her work from the MAP Fund, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Aaron Copland Fund.

Ches Smith: Laugh Ash

What: Ches Smith debuts three new pieces that explore orchestrational commonalities and incongruences.
When: Wednesday, October 11, 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 his new chamber noise ensemble Laugh Ash, Ches Smith debuts three new pieces that explore orchestrational commonalities and incongruences among acoustic instruments and electronic sounds. With an ensemble drawing from the worlds of contemporary concert music and new jazz, the writing draws on both traditions, with Smith’s electronics providing a beat, a noise factor, or an enhanced orchestration. To further this element, producer / engineer / musician Eli Crews will be providing live sound manipulation.

Laugh Ash is a new ensemble assembled by drummer, percussionist and composer Ches Smith in which the intricacies of chamber ensemble composition are morphed through a lens of low-fi hip hop, damaged electronics, and block structures. The group consists of a mix of players at the forefront of New York City’s new music and jazz scenes: Jennifer Choi, Anna Webber, Nate Wooley, Oscar Noriega, Michael Nicolas, and Eli Crews.

In addition to leading his own bands These Arches, Ches Smith Trio (with Craig Taborn and Mat Maneri) and We All Break, Ches Smith also works as a side musician, playing drums and percussion with Marc Ribot, Tim Berne, Mary Halvorson, the Dave Douglas and Lee Konitz Quintet, Darius Jones, Matt Mitchell, John Zorn, Secret Chiefs 3, Terry Riley and many others. He also collaborates in the doom-improv trio Tanks with Brandon Seabrook and Toby Driver, and free jazz duo Good for Cows with Devin Hoff.

For Living Lovers // Brandon Ross & Blazing Beauty

What: Brandon Ross presents a compositional series inspired by photographic images of Venezuelan artist Carolina Muñoz.
When: Tuesday, October 10, 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 – Folk jazz guitarist Brandon Ross presents Immortal Obsolescence, a compositions series for improvisation inspired by photographic images of Venezuelan artist Carolina Muñoz, followed by the acoustic duo of For Living Lovers.

For Living Lovers is the acoustic duo of guitarist Brandon Ross and acoustic bass guitarist Stomu Takeishi. Founded in 2002, For Living Lovers developed out of the discovery of a shared musical sensibility and influence of instruments designed by legendary luthier Steve Klein. The duo has recorded and toured the film music of Toru Takemitsu, played the prestigious Saito-Kinen Festival in Nagano, Japan, and released Revealing Essence on Sunnyside Records (2014) to superlative reviews.

Brandon Ross is a guitarist, composer, vocalist, and songwriter based in New York City. He has performed and recorded with jazz luminaries such as Henry Threadgill, Cassandra Wilson, Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris, Oliver Lake, Leroy Jenkins, Wadada Leo Smith, Bill Frisell and many others, crafting a personal approach to guitar and improvisation that has taken him all over the world. A co-founder of the avant power trio, Harriet Tubman, and the nuanced acoustic duo, For Living Lovers, Ross moves freely between sonic terroirs of bombast and intimate subtlety. In addition to composing for documentary films and television, Ross leads the experimental music ensemble Brandon Ross Pendulum. He is a 2014 CMA New Jazz Works grantee.  

RE: Lunar Eclipse

What: Lunar Eclipse by RE is an interactive audiovisual performance within an monumental inflatable dome sculpture.
When: Wednesday, October 4, 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 night under the stars — in a dome! Roulette is pleased to host Lunar Eclipse, an interactive audiovisual performance taking place within an monumental inflatable dome sculpture. Audience members are encouraged to enter the dome and move throughout the space during the performance. The evening will culminate in an immersive interactive “lunar eclipse.”

RE is comprised of six musicians and visual artists from the US and Thailand. The group met in Brooklyn and began collaborating on experimental multimedia performance projects, including Rendrgram, D.O.M.E., Zumest, New York Sound Painting Ensemble, Globular Cluster, Tiritee, and WX. Such collaborations have incorporated elements of structured improvisation, large scale sculpture and projection art, experiential audience engagement, and relatable and non relatable narrative landscapes.

Kazu Uchihashi: FLECT ft. Ikue Mori + Shelley Hirsch

What: A night of improvisation featuring Kudzu Oshitashi on electric guitars + daxophone with Ikue Mori and Shelley Hirsch.
When: Thursday, September 28, 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 – Japanese free improvisational guitarist Kazu Uchihashi presents FLECT, an evening of improvisation featuring experimental vocalist Shelley Hirsch and electronics pioneer Ikue Mori.

Kazu Uchihashi is a Japanese guitarist involved in free improvisation music. Born in 1959 in Osaka, Uchihashi started playing the guitar at age 12, going on to play in various rock bands before later studying jazz music. In 1988,Uchihashi joined the band the First Edition, and formed the band Altered States in 1990. He was also a member of Otomo Yoshihide’s Ground Zero from 1994 to 1997. In addition to his role as a free improviser, Uchihashi also plays daxophone, an electric wooden experimental instrument of the friction idiophone category. Uchihashi was musical director for Osaka theatre group Ishinha and has held improvisation workshops (known as New Music Action) in various cities in Japan, as well as London, Oslo, and Vienna. He owns his own record label, Innocent Records a.k.a. Zenbei Records, had held a music festival annually since 1996.

Shelley Hirsch is an  internationally-renowned vocalist, composer, storyteller and performance artist.

After moving to New York from her native Tokyo in 1977, Ikue Mori began playing drums in seminal No Wave band DNA with fellow noise pioneers Arto Lindsay and Tim Wright. In the mid 1980s, Mori began to employ drum machines in the context of improvised music. While limited to the standard technology provided by the drum machine, she nonetheless forged her own signature style. Throughout in 1990s she collaborated with numerous improvisors throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, while continuing to produce and record her own music. After becoming involved with the city’s flourishing improvisational scene via John Zorn, she began experimenting with drum machines, and in recent years utilizes the laptop as her primary instrument.

James Brandon Lewis: UnRuly Notes // Val Jeanty Duo

What: James Brandon Lewis + Val Jeanty present live spontaneous composition followed by new ensemble UnRuly Notes.
When: Monday, September 18, 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 – Former Roulette artists-in-residence James Brandon Lewis (saxophone) and Val Jeanty (electronics) join forces to present live spontaneous composition in a duo format, followed by Lewis’ new ensemble UnRuly Notes playing works inspired by Czech composer Antonín Dvořák.

Saxophonist and composer James Brandon Lewis has received accolades from cultural tastemakers such as Ebony Magazine, who hailed him as one of the “7 Young Players to Watch” in 2013. Lewis has shared stages with icons such as Benny Golson, Geri Allen, and Dorinda Clark Cole, as well as Roulette artists Ken Filiano, Darius Jones, and Jason Hwang. Lewis attended Howard University and holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts.

Haitian electronic music composer Val Jeanty creates esoteric sounds that tantalize the subconscious while creating a healing / cosmic frequency. By synergistically combining acoustics with electronics and the archaic with postmodern, Jeanty incorporates her African Haitian musical traditions into the present and beyond.Her AfroElectronica installations have been showcased in New York City at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, and The Village Vanguard. She is also recognized internationally and has performed at The SaalFelden Musical Festival in Austria, Stanser Musiktage in Switzerland, Jazz à la Villette in France, and the Biennale Di Venezia Museum in Italy.

Matana Roberts: “breathe…”

What: Saxophonist Matana Roberts presents a new conceptual song cycle entitled “breathe…”
When: Thursday, September 14, 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 – Matana Roberts‘ “breathe…” is part of a conceptual sound cycle exploring rise of militarized police in American culture and beyond. The program will focus on alternative modes of composition, improvisation and moving image as part of a conceptual graphic score. The performance will be the culmination of work that Matana is creating during her residency at Prismatic Park, curated by Blank Forms. 

Matana Roberts is an internationally recognized, Chicago-born saxophonist and multidisciplinary sound conceptualist working in various mediums of performance inquiry. She has created alongside visionary experimentalists of this time period in various areas of improvisation, dance, poetry, visual art, theater; as a saxophonist, documented on various sound recordings as collaborator, side woman and leader. Her recent work focused on the place / problem of memory and tradition as recognized, deciphered, deconstructed, interrogated through radical modes of sound communication, alternative styles of musical notation, and multi-genres of improvisation. Roberts’ work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC), Fridman Gallery (NYC), Museum of Contemporary Art — MOCA (Chicago) and Museum of Contemporary Art — MOCAD (Detroit). She is well-known for her acclaimed Coin Coin project, a multi-chapter work of “panoramic sound quilting” that aims to expose the mystical roots and channel the intuitive spirit-raising traditions of American creative expression. Constellation Records began documenting the Coin Coin project in 2011 and has released the first three of a projected twelve album-length chapters to date.

Peggy Lee Septet: Tell Tale

What: The Peggy Lee Septet, featuring Vancouver’s leading improvisers, presents Tell Tale, inspired by HBO’s Deadwood.
When: Wednesday, September 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 – Conceived in 2009 as a response to writer / creator David Milch’s HBO series Deadwood, Peggy Lee’s Tell Tale features an ensemble of improvisers from Vancouver’s deep and varied creative music community. Likening the players to characters in a story, Lee provides each player a chance  to voice their individual ideas in unaccompanied solos and in small ensembles within the framework of a musical suite. The seven composed sections of the music imply the arc of a story, yet are also intended as launching pads for the players to make extended improvised statements. The listener is lead on a journey that is never the same twice.

Cellist, improviser, composer Peggy Lee was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario. She studied classical cello, completing a bachelor’s degree in performance at the University of Toronto as a student of Vladimir Orloff and Denis Brott. She furthered her studies on the cello with lessons with Martha Gerschefski in Atlanta Georgia. Lee first became interested in collaborating with artists from different mediums and in veering away from the classical path during the fall of 1988, when she began a year residency with a string quartet at the Banff Centre in Banff, Alberta. She eventually relocated to Vancouver, which she now calls home. Peggy’s first forays into improvisation in Vancouver happened with dancers at the EDAM (experimental dance and music) studio at the Western Front and eventually led to her meeting and joining guitarists Ron Samworth and Tony Wilson in their respective bands; as well as becoming a member of the New Orchestra Workshop, which went on to have interesting and fruitful collaborations with Butch Morris, Wadada Leo Smith, René Lussier, Barry Guy and George Lewis. Peggy continues to collaborate with longtime musical associates including Dave Douglas, Wayne Horvitz, Robin Holcomb, Veda Hille and Lisa Miller.