As the longest night of the year unfolds and the journey of our planet nears the point when Winter commences in the Northern Hemisphere, Phill Niblock stages his annual Winter Solstice concert for the 13th consecutive year at Roulette, with a special twist in honor of his 90th year on Earth: 24 hours of music and film. Running from 12pm to midnight on two consecutive days, this live performance will consist of 12 sublime hours of music and mixed media film and video each day, with special guest performers interspersed throughout.

PLEASE NOTE: Concert runs from noon to midnight on both 12.21 and 12.22. A single ticket gets you access to both nights.

Guest artists join the performance beginning at 8pm each night.

THURSDAY 12/21
(1st live set) David First – guitar
(2nd) String Noise – Pauline Kim Harris and Conrad Harris – Unipolar Dance
more guests TBA

FRIDAY 12/22
(1st live set) David Watson, Bag and ExplWatson
(2nd) Chris McIntyre, ExplTiltBrass
(3rd) Neil Leonard
more guests TBA

A livestream will be available free of charge at 12pm on the day of the performance and archived for future viewing. Watch below or on YouTube. Please note: due to the length of the livestream, the archived video will be slightly delayed — be sure to check back for an uploaded video on YouTube in the coming weeks.

Phill Niblock is an intermedia artist using music, film, photography, video and computers. He makes thick, loud drones of music. Often in his live performance he simultaneously presents films and videos which look at the movement of people working. He also uses slides, or computer driven black and white abstract images. 

Niblock was born in Indiana in 1933. Since the mid-1960’s he has been making music, films and intermedia performances which have been shown at a wide-range of venues around the world. 

Since 1968 he has been an artist/member of the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York and since 1985, he has been its director. He has produced Music and Intermedia presentations at EI since 1973 – presenting over 1000 performances!.  He is also the curator of EI’s XI Records label. In 1993 he formed an Experimental Intermedia organization in Gent, Belgium – EI v.z.w. Gent – to support the artist-in-residence house and installations there.

Niblock’s creativity was inspired by musical and artistic activities in New York during the 1960s (from the art of Mark Rothko, Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd, Robert Morris to the music of John Cage, Morton Feldman and Sun Ra). His music is an exploration of sound textures created by multiple tones in very dense, often atonal tunings (generally microtonal in conception) performed in long durations. Many of his pieces are based on collaborations with specific musicians. Over the years he has thus worked with a large number of the most diverse players including: Susan Stenger, Robert Poss, Jim O’Rourke, Ulrich Krieger, Seth Josel, Peter Kotik, Tom Buckner, and many others.

He was the recipient of the prestigious 2014 Foundation for Contemporary Arts John Cage award. His music is available on the XI, Moikai, Mode Records, and Touch labels. He has also had a number of retrospectives, DVD releases and publications devoted to his work. His most recent releases are “Nurturing Exhibitions by Mathieu Copeland” for the Belgium based label Matière Mémoire and “Muna Torso” for the Australian Room40 label.