An evening curated by Kou Records, founded by Charmaine Lee and Randall Dunn, presenting recent and forthcoming artists from the label’s Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 cohorts. Live visuals by Mark Dorf. 

Presented by Kou Records in partnership with Roulette.

David Torn performs solo in celebration of now i imagine a place not the same, his new release on Kou Records, a singular encounter with his decades-long practice of real-time composition, looping, and electric guitar extended into something entirely its own. 

Aliya Ultan brings her Kou Records debut Looks Far Woman to the stage with the Boreas Quintet, the music reimagined for cello, two violas, violin, and bass.

Aliya Ultan and the Boreas Quintet
Aliya Ultan cello
Fung Chern Hwei viola
Georges Mefleh viola
Theo Espy violin
Eivind Opsvik bass

Kou Records (pronounced “koh”), which takes its name from the Chinese word for “mouth,” is dedicated to artists who have built their own musical languages. Across generations, they share a persistent curiosity and have synthesized an omnivorous appetite for influences in a highly personal and idiosyncratic manner. Kou’s artists are provided with the dedicated time and space for experimentation, collaboration, and expression—culminating in a full-length vinyl release.

David Torn is a pioneering electric guitarist, composer, and producer whose work has reshaped the possibilities of processed guitar across experimental music, film scoring, and contemporary improvisation for over four decades. Known for his highly personal approach to tone and signal manipulation, Torn treats the guitar as a responsive electronic ecosystem — combining alternate tunings, looping architectures, and touch-sensitive processing to create music that feels simultaneously visceral and atmospheric.

Torn has collaborated with an unusually wide spectrum of artists, including David Bowie, Madonna, Tori Amos, k.d. lang, John Legend, Don Cherry, Tony Levin, Bill Bruford, Tim Berne, and David Sylvian. His recordings for ECM Records helped define an immersive and spatial approach to electric guitar that continues to influence generations of experimental musicians. He has also contributed to film scoring alongside Carter Burwell, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Cliff Martinez, Howard Shore, and Mark Isham, shaping a cinematic vocabulary in which texture, atmosphere, and improvisational sensitivity play central roles.

Aliya Ultan — often called the Nocturnal Cellist — is a composer and performer based in New York. Her work treats the cello as a shape-shifting voice moving between orchestral lyricism, cathartic noise, and deeply personal forms of storytelling.

She has collaborated with John Lurie (The Lounge Lizards), electroacoustic pioneer David Behrman, Aaron Dilloway (Wolf Eyes), and composer-performers Tyshawn Sorey and George Lewis, and has performed with puppeteers Poncili Creación and choreographer Yoshiko Chuma’s School of Hard Knocks at venues including Lincoln Center, La MaMa, Broadway productions, and artist-run spaces across North America and abroad. Following her self-released album Witch Hunt, she toured extensively through the United States and Canada, performing more than forty concerts. She currently lives in the woods of New York with her three black cats and co-leads the Creative Music Studio’s Improvisers Orchestra, an ensemble lineage connected to Karl Berger and Ornette Coleman.