Roulette’s annual Mixology Festival highlights novel approaches to technology in music and media arts, since 1991, and is supported in-part by mediaThe Foundation.
Joy Guidry, Shamar Watt, Kwami Winfield
Joy Guidry is a bassoonist, versatile improviser, performance artist, and composer of experimental, daring new works that embody a deep love of storytelling; Joy’s music channels their inner child in honor of their ancestors and predecessors. The San Diego Tribune has hailed their performances as “lyrical and haunting…hair-raising and unsettling.” Joy was born in Houston, Texas, into a creative family that has shaped who she is today.
Joy holds a bachelor’s degree in Bassoon Performance from the Peabody Conservatory and a Graduate Performance Diploma from the Mannes School of Music. She has presented her original work at The Whitney Museum for American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, The Kitchen, Redcat, among many other venues. Joy has been commissioned by The National Sawdust, Long Beach Opera, JACK Quartet, Gaudeamus Festival, and the I&I Foundation. Joy has been featured in festivals, including the La Biennale di Venezia, A’Larme Festival, Cologne Jazz Week, Angel City Jazz Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, Big Ears Festival, and many more. In addition, Joy Guidry is the winner of the 2021 Berlin Prize for Young Artists. Joy Is currently playing on a Heckel Bassoon number 6101.
Shamar Watt is an interdisciplinary artist who explores the intersections of sound, movement, and visual art, drawing on quantum theories of entanglement to shape his work. Utilizing pink noise as a sonic foundation, Watt oscillates and modulates feedback noise to create and embody temporal “phantoms” within spaces, engaging audiences in multi-sensory experiences. His work delves into the porosity of the Black body and shadows, questioning how sound can be visualized and how movement can resonate audibly through feedback and pink noise.
Rooted in avant-garde forms of archetypes, Watt’s movement practice merges the intensity of Krump, the ritualistic gestures of Pentecostal pantomime, animist traditional forms from the maroons in Accompong Jamaica, Zimbabwe and the profound physicality of Butoh, forming a unique language of bodily articulation. His sonic landscape spans experimental electronic music, samples, dub-techno, tribal rhythms, [Black]noise, and drone soundscapes. Committed to liberatory practices, Watt uses “spiritual entertainment” to forge new pathways for connection and communication, invigorating the ways we experience and interpret sound, movement, and presence.
Kwami Winfield is a multi-disciplinary musician, composer, and improviser based in Brooklyn. Raised in Jersey City, NJ, she has been performing under her own name–as well as the alias soless dialtone–for over a decade, touring extensively in DIY circuits around the United States.
Kwami has been an artist in residence at Chaos Computer and Pioneer Works, and is currently artist in residence at The Living Gallery and Issue Project Room. Since 2021, she has performed in a duo with C. Spencer Yeh, as well as in ongoing collaborations with Many Many Girls, Camp Rock, Mom+Anon, Divide and Dissolve.
Kwami has contributed pre-recorded and live scores to dances and plays by artists Marshall, Arien Wilkerson, Malcolm-x Betts, Nile Harris. A multitude of self-released recordings are available online and on cassette via Stolen Time Audio and Call Waitn (streaming via hotline at 917-426-0260).
