Brooklyn, NY — Roulette is pleased to announce the release of their winter season from January 16 through March 20, 2018.
Visionary opera-theatre and music-theatre festival PROTOTYPE ushers in the new year with two nights of Stranger Love, a love story inspired by the writings of Plato and Octavio Paz, composed by Dylan Mattingly and scored for Contemporaneous; followed by Arthur Russell affiliate Peter Gordon and video artist Kit Fitzgerald premiering Into the Hot, Out of the Cool, featuring a new musical ensemble directed by Gordon coupled with Fitzgerald’s video drawings, animations, and camera imagery, mixed and processed live. Next up, Audrey Chen and guest collaborator plumb the depths of the voice as the most inherent and bodily instrument, producing improvisations that are fearless, fragile, and passionate. The month of January concludes with the start of Roulette’s winter & spring artist residency program, as Lucie Vítková presents Spectacle, a solo performance merging the construction and physicality of hichiriki and Japanese Gagaku notation with a focus on ethnomusicology and environmental practice.
February picks up with former Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas scoring the films of oft-overlooked West Coast experimentalist Curtis Harrington; followed by 2/4/THREE, a deep exploration of the French horn and the washboard from Vincent Chancey and Newman Baker, respectively. The first of two [DANCEROULETTE] performances this month comes from Jessica Cook, as Dog Flats sees three women (Ayano Elson, Katie Dean, and Cook) using objects, materials, and movement patterns to create a live multi-layered sound score amidst personal investigation to architecture, work/labor, disaster, and historic iconography. Later in the month, Chris Ferris & Dancers, known for its fearless action, physical indulgence, and elegant design, give the world premiere of If This Were Not Real followed by selections of Rampaging Light. The 2018 edition of Mixology Festival, dubbed Circuit Breakers, will comprise of four evenings and seven musical artists and ensembles who bend, blend, and extend electronic instruments and tools toward new realms of creative communication. The opening night will be an intimate celebration of the artist Jean-Jacques Perrey and the Ondioline, an early electronic keyboard instrument invented by Frenchman Georges Jenny, organized and performed by Australian pop artist Wally De Backer aka Gotye. Subsequent Mixology performances includes surreal songs, ritual roustings, and radiophonic phenomena from Daisy Press & Nick Hallett, Rachika S, Causings, Plan 23, Jantar, and GAIAMAMOO. February continues with world premiere of The Goddess, a 1934 Chinese silent film accompanied by a score from Min Xiao-Fen, with Rez Abbasi on guitar and Min playing multiple Chinese plucked instruments with vocals; a residency performance from Amirtha Kidambi and and her quartet Elder Ones; and the NYC premiere of the country’s strongest upcoming compositional voices — Kristina Wolfe, Adam Roberts, Shelley Washington, and Scott Wollschleger — given by Bearthoven. Other monthly highlights include Joe Diebes and BOTCH ensemble performing two nights of oyster, a new sung-spoken opera based on Alan Lomax‘s folk song science in the lead up to the information age; and Exceptet presenting three new works by Brendon Randall-Myers, Matt Evans, and their violinist Sarah Goldfeather.
In like a lion, out like a lamb — March kicks off with Bobby Previte’s Rhapsody Band performing a new narrative song cycle incorporating written music, improvisation, and vocals, featuring Nels Cline, Zeena Parkins, and Jen Shyu; followed by Four Directions, an improvised performance in combination of solos, duos, quartets from Jin Hi Kim with Elliott Sharp, William Parker, and Hamid Drake. Fans of avant jazz will rejoice in performances from Aaron Burnett and the Big Machine and Will Mason’s Electroacoustic Quintet, while intermedia audiences will enjoy a mini-festival highlighting Asian artists and composers working in transmedia and computerized instruments organized by media artist Angie Eng and featuring Atau Tanaka and Carole Kim. Also in the works — a dream lineup pays tribute to the life and music of beloved guitarist John Abercrombie in a concert underscoring his legacy and influences, with proceeds benefiting the John Abercrombie Scholarship Fund at SUNY Purchase. Lastly, the winter season concludes with three nights of String Orchestra of Brooklyn’s String Theories Festival. Opening night will be an ambitious collaborative exchange between the orchestra and avant-punk violin duo String Noise performing works by Eric Lyon accentuated by drummer Greg Saunier. The second night calls upon the feminist writings of Margaret Atwood and the protest song as an artistic genre for performances by The Rhythm Method. The final evening features meditative works for string orchestra, making use of drones, masses of sound, improvisation, and time-based structures woven together into an evening-length sound installation. Program highlights from the final night include Empire by Tony Conrad, Tuning Meditations by Pauline Oliveros, Twenty Three by John Cage, and Stridulations by Zach Layton.