Roulette welcomes Che Chen and Talice Lee as they perform a new set of material developed from a year of life together inside. These song fragments, tuning studies and unfinished thoughts will be juxtaposed for parallel live and virtual audiences in Roulette’s theater and on our streaming platforms.
Che Chen is a multi-instrumentalist based in Queens, NY. Born in 1978 to Taiwanese immigrant parents, Chen studied visual art before turning his attention to sound and music. He is primarily interested in modal, free and other forms of improvisation, untempered tuning systems (just intonation), and social music forms. In 2012 Chen and percussionist Rick Brown founded the group for which he is best known, 75 Dollar Bill, in which he plays electric guitar. Though mostly a self-taught musician, a two week crash course in the Moorish modal system with Jeich Ould Chigaly in Nouakchott, Mauritania in 2013 left an indelible impression on him. He runs the record label, Black Pollen Press and organizes the “Fire Over Heaven” concert series at Outpost Artist resources in Ridgewood, Queens.
Talice Lee grew up playing music in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Equally at home in song-based, composed and improvised music contexts, she has lent her violin playing and singing abilities to the songwriting projects of Sue Garner and poet Morgan Vo, 75 Dollar Bill, experimental compositions by Cody Boyce and Che Chen, and improvised settings with veteran NYC free improvisers Daniel Carter and Todd Capp.
