2022 Roulette Commissioned Artist
RUE is a world premiere by commissioned artist gabby fluke-mogul for solo, duo, & trio improvisation. Inspired by the plant, Ruta Graveolens, RUE weaves threads of duration, diaspora, & psychoacoustic dreaming through improvisatory thresholds. Composed for Nava Dunkelman, Ava Mendoza, & Zeena Parkins, fluke-mogul sews the seams in communion with three of the deepest musicians alive.
gabby fluke-mogul: violin
Nava Dunkelman: percussion
Ava Mendoza: electric guitar
Zeena Parkins: electric harp
gabby fluke-mogul is a New York based violinist, improviser, composer, & educator. fluke-mogul exists within the threads of improvisation, the jazz continuum, noise, & 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, Fred Frith, Daniel Carter, Ava Mendoza, Jessica Pavone, Luke Stewart, Zeena Parkins, & Pauline Oliveros among many other musicians, poets, dancers, & visual artists. gfm holds a MFA in Music Performance & Literature from Mills College, a BA in Music & Early Childhood Education from Hampshire College, & a Deep Listening certificate from The Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer.
Nava Dunkelman is a percussionist and improviser based in Brooklyn, NY. Born in Tokyo, Japan and raised in a multi-cultural environment by an American father and Indonesian mother. 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, Brandon Seabrook, Angélica Negrón, Pauchi Sasaki, and gabby fluke-mogul and many others. She has performed classical and contemporary pieces with the William Winant Percussion Group, Joan Jeanrenaud, San Francisco Girls Chorus, San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and others. Nava studied percussion under Eugene Novotney at Humboldt State University before attending Mills College, where she studied with William Winant, Fred Frith, Maggi Payne, and Zeena Parkins.
Ava Mendoza is a Brooklyn-based guitarist, singer, songwriter and composer. Born in 1983, she started performing her own music, and as a sidewoman and collaborator in many different projects, as soon as she was legally allowed into venues. As a guitarist, Mendoza has received acclaim for her technique and viscerality. Her most ongoing work is as leader of art rock band Unnatural Ways, and as a solo performer of her own music and works by contemporary composers. In any context she is committed to bringing expressivity, energy and a wide sonic range to the music. Mendoza has toured throughout the U.S. and Europe and recorded/performed with musicians including Carla Bozulich, Malcolm Mooney (CAN), Steve Shelley, Mike Watt, Adele Bertei, Mick Barr, William Hooker, Nels Cline, Matana Roberts, John Zorn, Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Fred Frith, William Parker, Hamid Drake, Object Collection (Travis Just), ROVA, Negativland, the Violent Femmes, and members of Caroliner. She has received composition commissions from film distributor Kino Lorber, new music duo The Living Earth Show, the Jazz Coalition, and John Zorn’s Stone Commissioning Series at National Sawdust. Recordings are available on labels Tzadik, Astral Spirits, SGG, Pyroclastic, Clean Feed, Resipiscent, and New Atlantis.
New York based electro-acoustic composer/improviser Zeena Parkins is a pioneer of contemporary harp practices. Through the use of expanded playing techniques, object preparations, and a series of self-designed one-of-a kind electric harps, the instrument’s capacities have been redefined: leaning into the harp’s physical limitations, pushing into its boundaries and impossibilities. In compositional projects, Parkins utilizes collections, contradictions, intimacy, scale, histories, topography, and intuitive processes, with a focus on tactility. Sonic presence and personality is revealed and felt where pitch loses orientation and reconfigures into feedback, gesture, and textured residue. All of this work, including multi-speaker sound installations and collaborations with dance and film, use the harp as a generative center. Parkins is the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, DAAD Artist Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts “Grants to Artists” Award, Multi-Arts Production Fund, NYFA Fellowship for Composers, Meet the Composer, Atlantic Center for the Arts Master Artist-in-Residence, Herb Alpert/Ucross Prize, The Shifting Award, and three New York Dance and Performance Awards/ “Bessies” for her groundbreaking work with dance. Parkins is the Darius Milhaud Professor of Composition at Mills College and this spring is receiving an honorary doctorate from Bard College.
gabby fluke-mogul, Nava Dunkelman, Ava Mendoza, Zeena Parkins: RUE is a Roulette commission and is possible, in part, by the Jerome Foundation. The Jerome Foundation, a long-time supporter of young composers, was a mainstay in Roulette’s early development and continues to help us fulfill our mission by presenting ambitious work by promising artists.
