Pianist Yuko Fujiyama founded Contemporary East in 2022. The new nonprofit organization aims to showcase the beauty of Eastern expression in improvisational music, and provide opportunity for artists of diverse backgrounds across disciplines to converse and create together.
In its first curatorial project, in partnership with the Roulette, the Contemporary East Series returns to Roulette’s stage to present four ensembles across two days featuring projects by Lesley Mok, DoYeon Kim, Leo Chang, and Fujiyama.
The series kicks off with former Roulette Awarded Artist DoYeon Kim, a renowned traditional gayageum player with a uniquely broad approach to music which incorporates Korean music, jazz, and improvisation, among other influences. Former commissioned artist Leo Chang will follow with Young Mong, his project with Alex Zhang Hungtai and Che Chen, whose long form improvisational experiments create a rootless, stateless, and borderless state of mind. Young Mong performed at Roulette in June of 2024 with Tashi Dorji for Chang’s commission. Chang lived as an expat in Singapore, Taipei, and Shanghai and moved to the United States in 2011.
