6pm-midnight

*Tickets allow re-entry.*

As the longest night of the year unfolds, Roulette stages Phill Niblock’s annual Winter Solstice concert for the 14th consecutive year—for the first time following the composer/filmmaker’s passing, in collaboration with his partner, video artist Katherine Liberovskaya. The annual event features Niblock’s multimedia performance style: multiple projections, mainly of his major film work The Movement of People Working (1973-1991), soundtracked by compositions from throughout his over 50 year career.

With performers joining some pieces live:
David First harmonica(s)
Davide Capobianco oboe
David Watson bagpipes

The Movement of People Working is a documentary collection of multiple short videos with minimalist editing, focused on people in their daily activities and tasks of manual labor, including hammering, sewing, weaving, raking, harvesting, dyeing, fishing, and more—featuring over 25 hours of mostly 16 mm footage from Peru, Mexico, Hungary, Hong Kong, Brazil, Lesotho, Portugal, China, Japan, Sumatra, and the Arctic. Accompanied by Niblock’s droning compositions, the piece is both visually and sonically immersive, with a rhythmic and unbroken structure.

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.

Phill Niblock (1933-2024, USA) was an artist whose fifty-year career spanned minimalist and experimental music, film, and photography. Since 1985, he served as director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a branch in Ghent, and curator of the foundation’s record label XI. Known for his thick, loud drones of music, Niblock’s signature sound is filled with microtones of instrumental timbres that generate many other tones in the performance space. In 2013, his diverse artistic career was the subject of a retrospective realized in partnership between Circuit (Contemporary Art Centre Lausanne) and Musée de l’Elysée. The following year Niblock was honored with the prestigious Foundation for Contemporary Arts John Cage Award.