Leo Chang presents improvised electroacoustic music for his 2024 Roulette Commission with Alex Zhang Hungtai, Tashi Dorji, and Che Chen.

There was almost an immediate clarity that this musical connection could only come out of migration. Relating to the transience of homes. We had a mutual understanding that while seeing different parts of the world is a privilege, the forces of Western imperialism are so tangible when witnessing so many environments that have been built in the image of the oppressors; brought up under the myth that the only way to imagine freedom is to imitate the colonizers. Instead, we improvise and experiment with the rootless, stateless, borderless. So that this music has no name, no claim to any land or place. No identity, no authenticity, no self. This music is temple in jungle. Shrine to meditative unpredictability.

This concert is a long-form improvisational performance. There’s a form that has been collectively composed and agreed upon by the band, with a broad aim of slowly introducing listeners into a high-intensity vibrational energy then maintaining that intensity until the end.

Leo Chang jeonmo (electronic feedback hat), amplified gongs, voice, electronics, piri and taepyungso (double reeds)
Alex Zhang Hungtai electronics, saxophone
Che Chen flute+megaphone, percussion, funnel reed
Tashi Dorji electric guitar

A livestream will be available free of charge at 8pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing. Watch below or on YouTube.

Leo Chang is a Korean improviser, composer, performer, and scholar of experimental music currently living in Brooklyn. Born in Seoul, Leo lived as an expat in Singapore, Taipei, and Shanghai, and then moved to the United States in 2011. Needing to assimilate to various cultures and thereby cultivating an irreverence towards rules and norms from a young age, Leo expresses rootlessness and multiplicity within identities through his music. His art is an act of home-making inspired by various musical and ideological movements that have sought to question power dynamics and imagine egalitarian possibilities. His primary methods are improvisation, written text, graphical notation, and electronic processing. Leo frequently performs as/with VOCALNORI, which amplifies vocal sounds through gongs via electronic instruments. He also plays Korean double reed instruments (piri and taepyungso) in untraditional ways, often processing his piri playing using electronics. Leo has shared his artistic practice at various gatherings and venues: notably the Vision Festival, Pierre Boulez Saal, Pioneer Works, NYC Winter Jazzfest, Ostrava Days New Music Festival, New York City Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, and the International Computer Music Conference. His projects have been supported by Roulette Intermedium, the Brooklyn Arts Council, Center for Performance Research, Korea Foundation, Arts for Art, EMPAC at Rensselaer, Chashama, and the Tank, among others. Leo’s upcoming and recent discography can be found on Mung Music, Infrequent Seams, Notice Recordings, Dinzu Artefacts, Tripticks Tapes, and SUPERPANG.

Alex Zhang Hungtai is a multi disciplinary artist focused in improvisation and its correlation with the unconscious. His instrumentation ranges from Saxophone, drums, to electronics. Some past collaborators include : Tashi Dorji, Che Chen, Leo Chang, Chris Williams, Sam Shalabi, David Maranha, and Gabriel Ferrandini. He has appeared in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return, alongside Dean Hurley and Riley Lynch under the fictitious band TROUBLE. His latest film score GODLAND by Hlynur Pálmason was in competition at Cannes film festival’s Un Certain Regard. He currently lives in New York City.

Che Chen is an improviser, composer, bandleader, multi-instrumentalist and concert organizer based in Queens, NY. An energetic presence in New York City’s experimental underground since the early 2000s, he has tread an idiosyncratic path from noise-song duo True Primes to playing in groups led by drone minimalists and Japanese outsider artists, to studying guitar in Mauritania and improvising with veterans from NYC’s storied free jazz community. Organizing concerts has always been a parallel activity, stemming from a firm belief that music must take place in community. In 2012, he and “plywood crate” player Rick Brown founded 75 Dollar Bill, a group with flexible personnel whose hybrid music synthesizes modal and rhythmic concepts from the non-Western world, Sun Ra’s space chords and the minimalist and No Wave histories of their hometown. Chen’s performances explore improvisation as an extension of listening, setting the spontaneous invention of his playing within electronic drones, noise and an immersive sense of space that invokes the meditative, psychedelic and the sounds of everyday life.

Tashi Dorji is a Bhutanese guitarist and improvisational musician known for his avant-garde and experimental approach to music. Tashi’s own skewering of guitar traditions has developed an idiosyncratic take on the instrument, one defined by movement and profound openness to technique.