Downtown staple and guitarist Chris Cochrane organizes an evening of noise, improvisation, celebration, and recognition through song with an extraordinary lineup of performers.

This performance will be presented virtually and available for free on a variety of streaming platforms. Our theater is currently closed for public performances as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and the safety measures that Roulette has put in place to keep staff, artists, and the public safe.

Chris Cochrane: guitar
Brain Chase: drums
Zeena Parkins: harp
John Thayer: percussion/electronics
Kato Hideki: bass
Gordon Beeferman: keyboards
Jim Pugliese: percussion
Gelsey Bell: vocals
Kevin Bud Jones: visuals

Chris Cochrane is a songwriter and guitarist who has been playing in New York since the 1980s, playing with downtown legends including Zeena Parkins, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Billy Martin, Eszter Balint and Brian Chase. He has composed music for Dennis Cooper, John Jasperse, Neil Greenberg, Nayland Blake, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Jennifer Monson and Circus Amok. He was in the bands No Safety and Curlew, and currently works in several projects.

Brooklyn-based musician Brian Chase is the drummer for Grammy-nominated rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs, NYC’s experimental music community and Drums and Drones, a solo project with a compositional focus on the harmonic resonances derived from drums and percussion. As an exceptionally versatile performer, Brian’s music has taken him across the world to such notable stages as the Sydney Opera House, the Reading and Leeds Festivals, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as countless independent art spaces of music’s ‘underground’ communities. Recorded works include several with Yeah Yeah Yeahs and many with leading improvisors and composers such as Zeena Parkins, Catherine Sikora and Jeremiah Cymerman.

Electro-acoustic composer/performer, multi-instrumentalist, improviser, and pioneer of contemporary harp performance, Zeena Parkins re-imagines both the acoustic harp and an evolution of her original electric ones, through the use of expanded playing techniques, preparations, and custom designed processing. Awards include Doris Duke Artist Award, DAAD Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, MAP Fund grants NYFA Fellowship, Atlantic Center for the Arts Master Artist-in-Residence, Herb Alpert/Ucross Prize, Honorary Mention/Prix Ars Electronica, and three New York Dance and Performance Awards/ Bessies for her groundbreaking work with dance. Zeena Parkins is a Distinguished Visiting Artist at Mills College in Oakland, California.

John Thayer is a New York based musician, composer and audio engineer. Thayer explores the intersection of acoustic and electronic music, using tape manipulations and experimental recording techniques, to produce instrumental music in a wide spectrum ranging from exploratory group improvisation to solo ethereal soundscapes. He is the house engineer at Thump Studios in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. A trained drummer and percussionist, Thayer has toured internationally as a performing artist. His work has appeared in numerous television and feature films. He is a Montello Foundation artist in residence for 2018 and his sound installation “Currents” premiered at Brooklyn’s Trestle Gallery in 2019.

Kato Hideki (Kato: family name; Hideki: given) is a musician, composer & producer. His own projects are: Death Ambient with Ikue Mori & Fred Frith; Green Zone with Otomo Yoshihide & Uemura Masahiro; Tremolo of Joy with Charles Burnham, Briggan Krauss, Ed Tomney & Calvin Weston; OMNI with Nakamura Toshimaru & Akiyama Tetsuji; Plastic Spoon with Karen Mantler, Douglas Wieselman & Shahzad Ismaily; and the solo works Hope & Despair and Turbulent Zone. He also composed music for TAKE Dance, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, and a feature documentary film “El Viaje De Monalisa”.

Composer and pianist/organist Gordon Beeferman, “a wide-eyed polymath who masterfully toes the lines of myriad genres” (Brooklyn Rail), has created and performed innovative opera, chamber and orchestra music, avant-jazz, and numerous collaborations with choreographers, writers, and other artists in New York and internationally. His music has been performed by the New York City Opera, Albany Symphony, Momenta Quartet, American Brass Quintet, eighth blackbird, California EAR Unit, Collage, and others. Beeferman leads his own ensembles, including an Organ Trio and the quartet Other Life Forms.

Jim Pugliese is a drummer, percussionist, composer and international recording artist on over 150 recordings of Jazz, Rock, Avant Garde and Film music while also leading his own groups. A recognized unrepentant shaker of the conventional, his artistic approach hovers between rhythmic cataclysm and spiritual inoculation. Jim’s performing experience is diverse. As a freelance drummer-percussionist he is in much demand and has performed with The New York Philharmonic Horizon Series (guest artist), as a soloist or performer on numerous new music and jazz festivals in Europe, Japan and the USA and he has toured and recorded with The Philip Glass Ensemble, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Bobby Previte, Anthony Coleman, Zeena Parkins and many more.

Gelsey Bell is a New York City-based singer, songwriter, and scholar. She has been described by The New York Times as an “imaginative” “winning soprano” whose performance of her own music is “virtuosic” and “glorious noise.” She has released multiple albums, including most recently This is Not a Land of Kings, and Ciphony with John King. Her works include Bathroom Songs, Scaling, Our Defensive Measurements, This Takes Place Close By (with thingNY), Prisoner’s Song (with Erik Ruin), Wealth from the Salt Seas (with Anna Sperber), and the acclaimed adaptation of Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives (with Varispeed). She is a core member of thingNY, Varispeed, and the Chutneys.

A native Philadelphian, Kevin Bud Jones has lived and worked in NYC since 1975. While working as an electrician (gaffer) in the film industry, he also designed lights for music, dance, and theater. His subsequent 30 plus year career as a cinematographer gave him new opportunities to incorporate rear and front projections in his work. Throughout all of this time Kevin performed as a musician on the downtown scene, lately as a member of Collapsible Shoulder, and as music director of Antonio Ramos and the Gang Bangers dance company.