Simon Hanes from Roulette Intermedium on Vimeo.
Roulette TV catches up with composer Simon Hanes, whose performance was originally scheduled for June, via video chat. Hanes talks about working virtually and finding new ways to make art that transfers the impression of proximity with collaborators that are apart.
Tredici Bacci — a 14-piece group of musicians all under the age of 30 — sounds, to the thoughtful listener, like a celebration. A celebration not of a genre of music, but rather of an era, and, more specifically, the aspects of an era which perhaps have been glossed over by conventional history. To that end, Tredici Bacci celebrates the strange, somewhat seedy, schmaltzy and smooth aspects of 1960s-70s popular culture. The songs are cries in honor to the many artifacts which seem now to be the strange leavings of a recently liberated nation — the sensuous oddities leftover from an entirely different world.
Over the last few years, young musician and composer Simon Hanes has worked tirelessly to channel his deep love and infatuation with 1960s / 1970s soundtrack music into his own personal vision and homage to the style through dedicated songwriting, and the integration of the totality of his musical influences. After graduating from New England Conservatory and spending time playing bass in the then-Boston-based No(ise) Wave unit Guerilla Toss, Hanes adopted the “Luxardo” persona as an arranger, composer, conductor, and guitarist, and went on to assemble a band of epic orchestral proportions. Consisting of close friends and fellow classically-trained musicians, the resulting band is the ambitiously sizable 14-piece Tredici Bacci. The band’s first full-length album, Amore Per Tutti, was released by NNA Tapes in November 2016. simonhanes.com
As part of our Roulette at Home digital initiative, Dispatches is a set of brief communications or small collections of new work from artists, sent directly to our community—a way to remain connected and engaged in a time marked by distance and isolation caused by COVID-19.