Roulette is proud to respond directly to artists’ needs for money, space, and support by awarding commissions, residencies, and fellowships to extraordinary artists of promise. Get to know some of our current awardees below, and be sure to see their performances this season!
Residencies
gabby fluke–mogul is a New York based violinist, improviser, composer, & educator. fluke–mogul weaves within the threads of avant & free jazz with deep roots in improvised & experimental music. Their playing has been described as “embodied, visceral, & virtuosic” & “the most striking sound in improvised music in years…”
gabby is humbled to have collaborated with Nava Dunkelman, Joanna Mattrey, Ava Mendoza, Fred Frith, Luke Stewart, Zeena Parkins, Tcheser Holmes, Mara Rosenbloom, William Parker, & Pauline Oliveros among many other musicians, poets, dancers, & visual artists. More info at www.flukemogul.com
Photo by Samantha Riott
Isabel Crespo Pardo is a NYC-based latinx vocalist, improviser-composer, and interdisciplinary artist. Their work actively entangles sound, visual art, text and performance, always evolving to reflect the intra/interpersonal spaces they inhabit. For Crespo, art is a place to gather, to exercise intuition, rigor and delight. They are deeply invested in building generative structures and intentionally inviting others into focused explorations. Their compositional voice can be heard on el rostro (des)cubierto, an album threading composition and improvisation to explore self and sociality, released in June 2023 on Lobby Art Records. More at isabelcrespo.com.
photo by Nathalie Basoski
Dominican-American saxophonist and composer, Alfredo Colon is a proud New York City native. His distinct sound lives at the crossroads of a wide range of experiences and inspirations, from his upbringing in Upper Manhattan, to his Dominican heritage, to his love of musicians with both improvisational and melodic approaches, including Sonny Sharrock, Ornette Coleman, and Pharoah Sanders. Colon has collaborated with artists such as Henry Threadgill, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Moses Sumney, Amirtha Kidambi, Harish Raghavan and many others. He was the recipient of the Jazz Coalition Commission Fund grant in 2020 and Roulette’s Van Lier Fellowship in 2022.
Mexican born vibraphonist/marimbist and improviser/composer Patricia Brennan “has been widely feted as one of the instrument’s newer leaders” (NYC Jazz Record).
Patricia’s album “Maquishti” was #4 in The NY Times top 10 jazz albums of 2021. Patricia received the rising star vibraphonist award on Downbeat’s 2022 Critics Poll and #4 vibraphonist of the year on the 2023 Critics Poll. Her album “More Touch” was listed on NPR’s Best Music of 2022 and the opener track “Unquiet Respect” was listed on NPR’s 100 Best Songs of 2022.
Patricia is also an accomplished side person, working for artists such as Grammy winning Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro Latin Jazz Big Band and Mary Halvorson’s Amaryllis.
Patricia is a Valley of Search, Pyroclastic, Audeze, and Bluehaus Mallets artist and is currently on the faculty at the New School and NYU Jazz.
Photo by Frank Heath
Gryphon Rue (b. New York, NY) is an artist, composer, and musician. A crazy quilt derived from field recordings, custom synthesizers, singing saw, and harmonium, Rue‘s music sweeps across forms of minimalism and elastic dance. It suggests biological actions, molecular events, psychic possession, & nourishment.
Rue’s music feels like going on a trip you may have taken before, albeit not in a long, long time … his sense of dynamics and texture revealing a finely honed craftsmanship. – Pitchfork
Rue‘s latest album is A Spirit Appears to a Pair of Lovers (Not Not Fun). He also performs in a duo with Merche Blasco (North of The Future, Astral Editions) and with Benton C Bainbridge, in the audiovisual duo Rue Bainbridge. His program Earmark on Montez Press Radio features emerging and established composers and sound artists. Since 2020 Rue‘s performances have spanned international venues such as Fondazione ICA Milano, Hauser & Wirth, de Young Museum, Vector Hack Festival, Lafayette Electronic Arts Festival, Roulette Mixology restival, New Media Art & Sound Summit, Experimental Arts Intermedia, Microscope Gallery, Fridman Gallery, Qubit, No Moon, Nowadays.
Photo by Lena Shkoda
Commissions
Micah Thomas was born in Columbus, Ohio. In 2015, Micah Thomas was awarded the Jerome L. Greene Fellowship from the Juilliard School where he completed his B.M. and M.M. degrees. His first album with his trio, “Tide”, was released in June 2020. In September 2022, Micah Thomas released his first solo album “Piano Solo”, which later received the Grand Prix Award from Charles Cros Academy of France. He is now performing actively both as a leader of his own trio and a steady member of the Immanuel Wilkins Quartet, alongside sideman appearances with Ambrose Akinmusire, Billy Drummond, and others.
David Leon is a Cuban-American saxophonist, woodwinds player, and composer/improvisor living in Brooklyn, New York. His diverse musical output is guided by a persistent search for vitality and a thoughtful engagement with nuance: in timbre by creatively manipulating saxophone technique, in pitch by tampering with equal temperament, and in texture possibility through orchestration and improvisation. His work has been recognized by the ASCAP Foundation, New Music USA, The Jazz Gallery, Metropolis Ensemble, Compositum Musicae Novae, among others.
photo by Luke Marantz
Zoh Amba is a composer, saxophonist, and flutist from Tennessee. Her music blends avant-garde, noise, and devotional hymns. Before studying music at the San Francisco Conservatory Of Music, New England Conservatory and studying with David Murray in New York, she spent most of her time writing and practicing saxophone in the forest near her home. Today, her powerfully unique avant-garde music is full of folk melodies, mesmerizing refrains, and repeated incantations. Amba released two records in 2022, her debut record O, Sun which was produced by John Zorn and released on the prestigious label Tzadik. Zoh Amba’s second record, Bhakti features Micah Thomas, Tyshawn Sorey, and Matt Hollenberg. She has collaborated with a variety of high profile musicians such as Jim White (Dirty Three), legendary jazz bassist William Parker, Brian Chase (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), etc. Amba has also performed at well respected venues and festivals Roulette (NY), Ars Nova Presents (Philadelphia), Vision Festival (NY), and Angel City Jazz Festival (LA) along with a 2023 Big Ears Festival’s performance.
Nava Dunkelman is a percussionist and improviser based in Brooklyn, NY. Born in Tokyo, Japan. Her musical approach is innovative and dynamic, combining virtuosity and intuition. Meticulous in an intrinsic way, she uses her distinctive sound palette to explore and give life to a vast spectrum of musical possibilities. Nava‘s current projects are electro-percussion experimental noise duo IMA with Amma Ateria, and percussion duo NOMON with her sister Shayna Dunkelman. She also has performed and collaborated with Fred Frith, John Zorn, William Winant, Ikue Mori, Pauchi Sasaki, Angélica Negrón, gabby fluke-mogul, Brandon Seabrook, and many others.
photo by Damien Maloney
Leo Chang (he/him) is a Korean improviser, composer and performer. Born in Seoul, Leo lived as an expat in Singapore, Taipei, and Shanghai, until moving to the United States in 2011. His art is an act of home-making inspired by various musical and ideological movements that have sought to question power dynamics and imagine freedom within egalitarian possibilities. His primary methods are free improvisation, written text, graphical notation, and electronic processing. Leo’s various performances and collaborations have been with William Parker, gamin, DoYeon Kim, eddy kwon, Chris Williams, Lester St. Louis, Miriam Parker, Alex Zhang Hungtai, Lucie Vítková, Jason Nazary, S.E.M. ensemble, the Rhythm Method, and the JACK quartet. His projects have been supported by the Brooklyn Arts Council, Korea Foundation, and EMPAC at Rensselaer, among others.
photo by Alvis Mosley
Van Lier Fellows
DoYeon Kim is a traditionally trained Korean artist playing the gayageum, a traditional Korean string instrument. She has developed a uniquely broad approach to music, which incorporates Korean music, jazz, and improvisation, among other influences, and is credited with introducing the gayageum into the improvisational music scene worldwide. Her recent collaborative projects have broadened to include dancers, actors and visual artists. Philosophically, she strives to demonstrate a broader approach to music by drawing from Korean tradition, improvisation, and the development of original playing techniques.
During her traditional Korean training, DoYeon won numerous international competitions for her gayageum performances, including the Dong-A Ilbo Traditional Music Competition (Gold Prize, 2009), and the On-Nala Korean Music Competition (Gold Prize, 2011). She is also a graduate of the Contemporary Improvisation Department at the New England Conservatory of Music, where she was the first student ever admitted to the school playing any kind of Korean traditional instrument, and has recently joined the faculty.
DoYeon has worked with numerous composers, performing several world premieres, and has been an invited guest lecturer for gayageum and Asian music at many universities nationally and internationally. Her first album, GaPi (2017), featured an intimate synthesis of traditional Korean music and jazz, and was nominated for a 2018 Korean Grammy Award in the crossover album category. More recently, DoYeon was an invited music director for Gyeonggi Sinawi Orchestra, a traditional music orchestra in Korea, and was recognized by Grammy.com as one of the 7 Musicians Pushing Ancient Asian Instruments Into The Future (2021).
New York City-based multi-instrumentalist, producer, composer, and engineer Morgan Guerin has spent his entire life exploring new and exciting ways to navigate sound. Dubbed a “wunderkind saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist” by The New York Times, Guerin was born into a musical family with a pianist mother and bassist father. Born right outside of New Orleans, Louisiana, Guerin gravitated towards the drums when he was just a few months old and started playing the saxophone when he was seven. He moved to Atlanta in 2009 to complete middle and high school, where he also began playing more instruments and getting deeper into engineering and production. He then moved to New York City in 2016. Guerin is skilled in several instruments, including bass, saxophones, electronic wind instrument (EWI), drums, and keys. Notable collaborators include Terri Lyne Carrington, Esperanza Spalding, Kassa Overall, and Tyshawn Sorey. In 2016, the Huffington Post named his debut album, “The Saga,” one of the year’s best Jazz albums. In 2017, Stereogum highlighted his sophomore album, “The Saga II,” as one of the best new albums. He was featured on Terri Lyne Carrington & Social Science’s Grammy-nominated album, “Waiting Game.” He was also a songwriter and co-producer of Esperanza Spalding’s 2019 Grammy-winning record, “12 Little Spells”. His third album, “The Saga III,” was released on September 18, 2020. Since then, Guerin has been commissioned to write works for Roulette, The Jazz Gallery, The Jazz Coalition, and violinist Jennifer Koh.
NYSCA Commission
Established in 1983 with generous support from the Jerome Foundation, Roulette’s Commissions and Residencies program has provided critical early-career support for over 100 artists. Similarly, through immersive fellowships supported by the Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of the New York Community Trust, Roulette has offered significant and sustained support and career development for a total of 20 young artists of promise.
Awarded artists are selected through a rigorous evaluation process. Jerome Commissioned artists are selected by a panel of Nominators, themselves accomplished composers and musicians whom Artistic Director Jim Staley invites to participate. Van Lier Fellows are also chosen by a panel of peers who have a wide acquaintance with young composers. Whether that takes the form of playing their music, including them in their ensembles or presenting their work, the panelists are both deeply familiar with the field and uniquely sympathetic to the difficulties that emerging artists face. Resident Artists are primarily selected from among past recipients of Jerome Commissions and Van Lier Fellowships.
In recognition that today’s early-career creators become tomorrow’s mid-career and more established experimental luminaries, Roulette will often apply for additional commissioning or project support for artists of all career stages with whom we have a history of collaboration, as a way of investing in the continued and long-term success of their careers.