Category: Press Releases

Bearthoven: New Works

What: Piano trio Bearthoven teams up with four critically lauded composers to perform new works for modern anxieties.
When: Wednesday, February 27, 2018, 8pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $20 Online $25 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org // (917) 267-0368

Brooklyn, NY — Fresh off the release of their 2017 album Trios, Bearthoven performs three NYC premieres by a collection of America’s strongest upcoming compositional voices — Kristina Wolfe, Adam Roberts, Shelley Washington, and Scott Wollschleger.

Bearthoven [ \’bâr-toh-vən\ ] is a piano trio creating a new repertoire for a familiar instrumentation by commissioning works from leading young composers. Karl Larson (piano), Pat Swoboda (bass), and Matt Evans (percussion) have combined their individual voices and diverse musical backgrounds to create a versatile trio focused on frequent and innovative commissioning of up-and-coming composers. Bearthoven is rapidly building a diverse repertoire by challenging composers to apply their own voice to an instrumentation that, while common amongst jazz and pop idioms, is currently foreign in the contemporary classical world.

Shelley Washington writes music to fulfill one calling- to move. With an eclectic palette, Washington tells sonic stories with a range of direction and change. Her major body of work is written for saxophone and large or small chamber ensembles. Besides composition, Washington is an active baritone saxophonist and vocalist.

Adam Roberts writes music that takes listeners on compelling journeys while drawing on a vivid array of sonic resources. Roberts’ music has been performed by ensembles such as the Arditti Quartet, the JACK Quartet, le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Callithumpian Consort, Earplay, andPlay duo, Transient Canvas, Ums ‘n Jip, Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center, the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble, the Association for the Promotion of New Music, violist Garth Knox, Guerilla Opera, and at festivals such as Wien Modern (Vienna), Tanglewood, the Biennale Musique en Scene (Lyons), and the 2009 ISCM World Music Days (Sweden).

Kristina Wolfe spent many of her formative years wandering through the forests of Mols Bjerge (near the city of Aarhus) in Denmark listening to the sounds of space and place. This environment, rich with neolithic graves, stone markers, and ancient roadways cultivated her imagination and creative focus on the spirits of the past, and has inspired her composition and listening practices up to the present day.

[RESIDENCY] Amirtha Kidambi: Solo // Elder Ones

What: Two-part performance-as-purge from established experimental vocalist and bandleader, Amirtha Kidambi.
When: Tuesday, February 27, 2018, 8pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $15 Online $20 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org // (917) 267-0368

Brooklyn, NY — For her first residency performance of the 2017-2018 season, Amirtha Kidambi performs Yajna, a solo vocal ritual designed as a sacrifice to the metaphoric sacred fire to purge the dark energies of this era. The performance will be followed by Kidambi’s quartet Elder Ones.

Amirtha Kidambi is invested in the performance and creation of music, from free improvisation and jazz, to experimental bands, and new music. She is a soloist, collaborator, and ensemble member in groups including Charlie Looker’s early music inspired dark folk band Seaven Teares, Mary Halvorson’s quintet Code Girl, analog percussion and light ensemble Ashcan Orchestra, and Darius Jones’ vocal quartet Elizabeth-Caroline Unit. As an improviser, she has played with Matana Roberts, Tyshawn Sorey, Ingrid Laubrock, Daniel Carter, Ava Mendoza, William Parker, Trevor Dunn, and many innovators in the New York scene. Recent collaborations include the premiere of AACM founder and composer/pianist Muhal Richard Abrams’ Dialogue Social, Darius Jones’ The Oversoul Manual at Carnegie Hall, a premiere of electronic composer Ben Vida’s work Slipping Control for voice and electronics with Tyondai Braxton at the Borderline Festival in Athens, Greece, the premiere of the late Robert Ashley’s final opera CRASH at the Whitney Biennial, a Jazz Gallery commission for Mary Halvorson’s Code Girl, the premiere of William Parker’s Soul of Light and a commission from the Jerome Foundation for her quartet Elder Ones at Roulette and artist residency at EMPAC to record the group’s debut album.

Elder Ones is the quartet performing the compositions of vocalist Amirtha Kidambi. Situated in concentric musical circles and communities in New York City, her collaborators include saxophonist Matt Nelson (Battle Trance/GRID), bassist Nick Dunston (Tyshawn Sorey Trio) and drummer Max Jaffe (JOBS/Peter Evans’ Being and Becoming) have crossed paths in the DIY underground and permutations of free improvisers in clubs and concert halls across New York City. The instrumentalists chosen for this project draw from a wide variety of vocabularies from hip-hop to the avant-garde, each bringing their highly individual language to the group. The quartet uses composed material and loose structures for improvisation, over a bed of Indian harmonium drones and synthesizer. Oscillating between worlds of raga, microtonality, jagged rhythmic precision and punishing brutality, Thyagaraja, Alice Coltrane or Stockhausen could be equally suspect sources of their sound.

[DANCEROULETTE] Chris Ferris: Present Tense Multiplied

What: Chris Ferris & Dancers premiere If This Were Not Real and perform excerpts from Rampaging Light.
When: Monday, February 26, 2018, 8pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $15 Online $20 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org // (917) 267-0368

Brooklyn, NY — Known for their fearless action, physical indulgence, and elegant design, Chris Ferris & Dancers perform the world premiere of If This Were Not Real, choreographed by Chris Ferris, which reflects alienation as a result of living in a time of hyper-connectivity. As space is defined, boundaries are created, and the dancer as a single unit appears In development since May 2016, Rampaging Light by Chris Ferris & Dancers holds and releases the audience with the silent step, soundless wind, screaming train, and buzzing wall of voices. The performance alters the perception of a single room and the flipping numbers on your clock. Dancers inhabit space by weaving a fabric of movement that varies from intricate to sweeping, light to determined, and is always part of a larger spatial design.

Chris Ferris is the artistic director of Chris Ferris & Dancers. Her work is based on an exploration of movement from a sculptural, dynamic and emotional point of view, attempting to merge space and time with a human element. Their newest suite of works, Rampaging Light, were presented in March 2017 as part of The Waxing Crescent, an evening of dance and music with guest artists presented by Ferris. An earlier version of Rampaging Light was performed at Take Root, Green Space Studio, Long Island City, in September 2016. Ferris’ work has also been presented at 60×60, Triskelion Arts, Green Space Blooms, Performance Mix, Sans Limites Movement Festival, Movement Research at Judson Church, University Settlement, the 92nd Street Y, and a variety of other venues.

Mixology Festival 2018: Circuit Breakers: Jantar // GAIAMAMOO

What: Two groups that collectively build visual and sonic textures into fantastical journeys, from Bushwick to Tokyo.
When: Friday, February 16, 2018, 8pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $15 Online $20 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org // (917) 267-0368

Brooklyn, NY — Reflective and raucous, from Bushwick to Toyko. The final night of Mixology Festival 2018: Circuit Breakers showcases Japanese duo GAIAMAMOO playing textured, noisy improvised music accompanied by video projections of Japanese Noh by Hiroshi Mehata, a.k.a. Mehata Sentimental Legend. The duo focuses on the intersection of sight & image, demonstrated by improvised sounds and abstract visual patterns. Afterwards, Bushwick collective Jantar performs Others, Who Will Follow Us, a new work consisting of video elements and improvised acoustic and electronic instruments in various combinations.

GAIAMAMOO is an experimental improvisation group formed in 2012 by Shogo Haraguchi and Mehata Sentimental Legend from Tokyo. In 2015, GAIAMAMOO were chosen to perform during the Sound Live Tokyo festival, organized by Pacific Basin Arts Communication (PARC), and also performed on “New Sound Sanctuary.” In 2016 and 2017, the duo toured California and New York City, appearing on Ridgewood Radio on WFMU broadcasted by Outpost Artist Resources. GAIAMAMOO also appeared in Festes Majors Alternatives de Vallcarca (Barcelona, 2016), eight-hour noise marathon festival GIGANOISE 2 (Tokyo, 2016), Ende Tymes (Brooklyn, 2017), Jazz Art Sengawa 2017, CLUB JAZZ 屏風 (Tokyo, 2017) and opened for Wolf Eyes’ Psycho Jazz in the Bay tour (California, 2017).

Jantar grew out of a series of site-specific and film collaborations between Tianna Kennedy and Chad Laird, gradually building to an ensemble that includes Kirsten Nordine, Kelly Rudman and Ted Robinson. Jantar performs experimental easy listening music, incorporating ambient noise and improvisation derived from film and background music.

Mixology Festival 2018: Circuit Breakers: Causings // Plan 23

What: Psychedelic, dark ambient, and virtuoso mindfulness from groups using microcosmic polyrhythms, transmission, and deep tech.
When: Thursday, February 15, 2018, 8pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $15 Online $20 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org // (917) 267-0368

Brooklyn, NY — On the third night of Mixology 2018: Circuit Breakers, Causings investigates two intertwining sound worlds: one of glacial music formed by intensely slow-moving polyrhythms, the other a malleable choreography for honing free form at the microcosmic level; while Silver Chord from Plan 23 offers ocean waves of textured, mostly electronic sound palettes, forming an integrated music that crosses the sensitivity of great improvisers with the experimentation of early electronics pioneers.

Causings is a collective with fluid membership and instrumentation based in New York City. The group explores structured improvisation using traditional and non-traditional instruments, 1-bit electronics, found objects, field recordings, cellphones, photographs, and signal-processing software. Since 2015, Causings has been featured on WKCR, WGXC / Wave Farm, Wesleyan University, Bennington College, The New School, and have released music on the Pan y Rosas and Power Moves labels.

Emerging out of Bushwick, Brooklyn, Plan 23 creates extended, immersive, audio-visual experiences that bend one’s perception of time & space. Encompassing a sonic spectrum from dark-ambient soundscapes via subliminal pulses to electro-acoustic psychedelic sounds the group delivers sonic explorations into uncharted spaces, thus redefining electronic psychedelic music for the 21st century. Plan 23 has performed at Knockdown Center, Silent Barn, Trans Pecos, BPM, Index Art Center Newark, Microscope Gallery, 23 Windows, Sonic Front, CADENCE 23, Brooklyn Wildlife Summer Festival, Bushwick Open Studios Arts Festival, Catskill Art Society, and at “Alien Acres” Summer Arts Festival in the Catskill Mountains. Their performance at Mixology Festival 2018 is dedicated to Peter Principle (1954-2017).

Mixology Festival 2018: Circuit Breakers: Daisy Press + Nick Hallett // Rachika S

What: Artists weaving the sacred and the profane into an electronic / human spectrum of artifacts, voices, cultures, and tradition.
When: Wednesday, February 14, 2018, 8pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $15 Online $20 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org // (917) 267-0368

Brooklyn, NY — Two distinct sets that conjure the divine, on the most sacred of days. First up, vocalist Daisy Press collaborates with composer-performer Nick Hallett for a concert of new material that traverses medieval plainchant, ambient techno, Indian raga, spectral music, tintinnabuli, and other extended techniques for voices and electronics. The following set will see Rachika S using A/V work, synthesizing light and video, to premiere music from her 2016 Loveless Records album Themes for a Film and an unreleased follow-up album.

Daisy Press is a prominent interpreter of modern and experimental classical music in the US and Europe. She has worked closely with influential living composers, including Steve Reich. For her recording and performance of Morton Feldman’s Three Voices, the New York Times hailed Press as “intrepid” and “passionate.” Press is a specialist in the music of 12th-century mystic Hildegard of Bingen, and she incorporates aspects of North Indian (Hindustani) ragas into her unusual and extraordinary interpretations of Hildegard’s Medieval chants. As the principal vocalist at House of Yes, a Bushwick performance venue, Daisy regularly collaborates with the creative directors and performance artists to arrange, improvise, and perform works which embody ecstasy, holiness, and the occasional taste of profanity. Daisy is the High Priestess of “Voice Cult,” a monthly performance art vocal community ritual.

Nick Hallett is a Brooklyn-based composer, vocalist, and cultural producer working between the worlds of sound, art, and performance. Hallett recently completed work on a trilogy of dance- theater scores for choreographer-director Bill T. Jones’s Analogy cycle, which he has been touring with the Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Company for the past three years. He received a 2017 New York Dance & Performance Bessie award for his music in Variations on Themes from Lost & Found, a reconstruction of work by choreographer John Bernd (1953-1988). His first opera, co-authored with artist Shana Moulton (and featuring Daisy Press), Whispering Pines 10, is currently being adapted for the internet. Hallett is the music director of the Joshua Light Show and co-directs the Darmstadt new music series. In their decade of working together, Daisy Press and Nick Hallett have teamed up in a range of cultural contexts — including opera, video, and performance art — at such venues as National Sawdust, New Museum, The Kitchen, SFMOMA, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, ISSUE Project Room, among others.

Rachika S is a Brooklyn-based ambient-electronic producer and multi- instrumentalist whose work touches upon electro-acoustic methods, installation, and video. She magnifies latent sonic and harmonic qualities of her instrumental work using electronic processing techniques like granular synthesis, while pushing and resampling those digital apparatuses to the point of revealing their artifacts—situating her work within the transitional space between physical acoustics and digital audio, the real and the virtual. She also drums for several local bands, including queercore quartet MALLRAT, and writes for national music magazines including Pitchfork, Rolling Stone and Time Out NY. She has spoken on panels and presented music at universities such as Hampshire College, Cornell University, and Wesleyan University, and her work in her various projects has been featured in publications including Tiny Mixtapes, Mask Magazine, Afropunk, New Noise Magazine and more.

Mixology Festival 2018: Circuit Breakers: Gotye Presents a Tribute to Jean-Jacques Perrey

What: Gotye assembles the Ondioline Orchestra, a new ensemble dedicated to reviving the spirit of the early French synthesizer.
When: Tuesday, February 13, 2018, 9pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $25 Online $30 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org // (917) 267-0368

Brooklyn, NY — The opening night of Mixology Festival 2018: Circuit Breakers features 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. Performed in the round, with direct sightlines into the intricate playing of the instrument, the program will offer a rare opportunity for fans of early electronic pop music to celebrate Perrey’s inventive studio work in a live environment.

Jean-Jacques Perrey (1929-2016) was an alternative pop visionary, a pioneer of rhythmic tape editing techniques, and a virtuoso of the rare French electronic musical instrument, the Ondioline. Gotye, a long-time Perrey fan and a budding Ondiolinist, has assembled the Ondioline Orchestra, a new ensemble dedicated to reviving the spirit of this rare and unusually expressive early synthesizer. The ensemble features thereminist/keyboardist Rob Schwimmer, vintage synth specialist and ex-Psychedelic Furs member Joe McGinty, as well as members of acclaimed alternative band Zammuto. Perrey’s best-known songs will be celebrated alongside ultra rare pieces co-written with Angelo Badalamenti and Billy Goldenberg in an eclectic set juxtaposing Perrey’s joyful and boisterous pop with more reflective work spanning three decades of his career. Ondioline Orchestra perform all sounds live, including Perrey’s signature sample sounds, classic Moog patches, and a rich variety of Ondioline timbres on fully-restored original instruments.

Wally De Backer, better known by his stage name Gotye, has wandered many and varied paths in over 20 years making music. From playing drums and singing in Australian rock’n’rollin’ three-piece The Basics in places as far flung as Pannawonica, Western Australia and Shibuya, Japan, to writing, recording and releasing his first Gotye albums entirely independently (including hand-making the packaging for hundreds of individual records), he is happy to be described as “hands on” with his projects. In 2006, his self-released second album Like Drawing Blood was voted by influential Australian radio station Triple J’s listenership as its favorite longplayer of that year. In 2012 his album Making Mirrors won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and the single from it, “Somebody That I Used To Know,” was awarded Record of the Year.

Lineup:

Wally De Backer – Ondioline, Vocals, Percussion
Rob Schwimmer – Ondioline, Theremin, Moog, Keyboards
Joe McGinty – Moog and Keyboards
Sean Dixon – Drummer
Nick Oddy – Guitar
Jacob Silver – Bass

About Mixology:

Mixology Festival 2018: Circuit Breakers presents four evenings and seven musical artists and ensembles who bend, blend, and extend electronic instruments and tools toward new realms of creative communication. Surreal songs, ritual roustings, radiophonic phenomena, and a multimedia mélange will incite, inspire, and inhabit. Active for over 25 years, Roulette’s Mixology Festival celebrates new and unusual uses of technology in music and the media arts. Primarily a snapshot of current activity, Mixology strives to reflect both the history and trends of innovation that impact the Zeitgeist.

Curated by David Weinstein, with consultation from Susan Karabush, Ruth Kahn, Kerry Santullo, and Mia Wendel-DiLallo.

Tuesday, February 13
Mixology Festival 2018: Circuit Breakers: Gotye Presents a Tribute to Jean-Jacques Perrey

Wednesday, February 14
Mixology Festival 2018 2018: Circuit Breakers: Daisy Press + Nick Hallett // Rachika S

Thursday, February 15
Mixology Festival 2018: Circuit Breakers: Causings // Plan 23

Friday, February 16
Mixology Festival 2018: Circuit Breakers: Jantar // GAIAMAMOO

Exceptet Winter Concert: Premieres by Sarah Goldfeather, Brendon Randall-Myers, Matt Evans

What: World premieres from composers Brendon Randall-Myers, Matt Evans, and Sarah Goldfeather, performed by Exceptet.
When: Thursday, February 8, 2018, 8pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $20 Online $25 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org // (917) 267-0368

Brooklyn, NY – New York-based ensemble Exceptet performs three brand new works — Episodic Memory by Brendon Randall-Myers, which draws on brain processes regarding trauma; The mesh by Matt Evans, inspired by human’s impact on the environment; and Mouth Full of Ears by Exceptet’s very own violinist Sarah Goldfeather, which illustrates contemporary political discourse in a musical manner.

Episodic Memory by Brendon Randall-Myers is a 25-minute work in three sections that reflects the way our brains process trauma and learn from mistakes. The first section starts with subtly shifting polyrhythms that emerge from the beat patterns of microtonal inflections of a single pitch, which are gradually picked up, articulated, and elaborated on directly by the ensemble. The second section abruptly focuses these rhythms to a 16th-note ostinato played at an extremely fast speed, high register, and loud volume. The third and final section begins with extremely quiet multiphonic trills traded around the ensemble, which gradually coalesce into a huge, oscillating mass of sound built on the same pitch that opened the piece. Randall-Myers was a 2017 Roulette Artist-in-Residence.

The mesh by Matt Evans is a 20-minute work in three continuous parts that unpacks the questions surrounding human impact on modern ecology in our recently defined epoch the “anthropocene” through musical abstraction and representation. Three distinct sections of the piece will represent the three basic states of Timothy Morton’s philosophy of Dark Ecology: “darkness as depression, darkness as uncanny, and darkness as sweetness.” The piece draws inspiration from the earth and the sublime through a musical topography of chromatic polyrhythmic dissonances, gradients of noise, and drones of ultimate stillness.

Mouth Full of Ears by Sarah Goldfeather is a 5-minute song featuring a simple melody that builds in orchestration and intensity. The text describes a person who cannot or does not think or speak for themselves — one who simply regurgitates information he or she hears without any synthesis, and on whom it is easy to project your own opinions and designs. An archetype prevalent on both sides of the today’s political spectrum, where so many default to a stance without critical thought, thus creating an even greater rift between us and near impossibility of sensible discourse.

About Exceptet
Founded on the rag-tag instrumentation of Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat, New York-based Exceptet is an ensemble with “vast emotional range and onomatopoetic charm” (I Care If You Listen) dedicated to commissioning today’s most compelling emerging composers. Exceptet recently performed on the Ecstatic Music Festival as part of the MATA Interval Series, The Times Two Series in Boston, the Queens New Music Festival, The UPenn Composers Guild, and has been showcased several times on WQXR. The group has commissioned new works from a wide range of composers, including Scott Wollschleger, Matt Evans, Brendon Randall-Myers, Sarah Goldfeather, Fay Kueen Wang, Alex Weiser, Fjola Evans, Brooks Frederickson, Paul Kerekes, Brian Petuch, and Eric Shanfield. The ensemble also collaborated with Exceptet violinist Sarah Goldfeather’s indie folk-band, Goldfeather.

[DANCEROULETTE] Jessica Cook: Dog Flats

What: Jessica Cook’s Dog Flats is a study of objects, materials and movement pattern to produce sound and visual sculpture.
When: Tuesday + Wednesday, February 6 + 7, 2018, 8pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $15 Online $20 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org // (917) 267-0368

Brooklyn, NY – Dog Flats sees three women 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. Performers Katie Dean, Ayano Elson, and Jessica Cook obscure and expand audience sight line to alter the perceiving of sound and its relationship to movement. Rhythmic patterns are systematically built and deconstructed to amplify and ornament gesture and shape. The performers traverse through rigid dance constructs cut with improvisational scores centered around memory, desire, and hyper-emotion. Sculptural landscaping and transformation produce sonic textures that are threaded and perpetuated alongside Lillie De‘s light design.

Jessica Cook is a Brooklyn-based multi-disciplinary artist originally from Durham, NC She graduated from SUNY Purchase in 2005 with a BFA in modern dance performance. She has performed her work in Judson Memorial Church, New Museum, Spring Break Art Fair, Westway, Pieter Performance Space in LA, and others. Cook has performed in New York City for 12 years, most recently with Milka Djordjevich/Chris Peck, Kim Brandt, Phoebe Berglund, and Laurel Atwell, and frequently on Roulette’s stage.

Katie Dean is a performer and designer originally from Harrisonburg, Virginia. She has performed in New York with visual artists and choreographers Xavier Cha, Jennifer Harge, Megan Harrold/Inimois Dance, Ivy Baldwin Dance, Sam Kim, Julie Mayo, Melanie McLain, Hannah Walsh, and Rebekah Windmiller, in collaborative work with Heather Bregman, Jake Dibeler, and Alaina Stamatis, and in a video by Mia Lidofsky and Celia Rowlson-Hall. Dean is currently in process with Phoebe Berglund, Kim Brandt, Jessica Cook, Shannon Hummel/Cora Dance, and Nadia Tykulsker.

Ayano Elson is a choreographer and designer. She was born in Okinawa, Japan and is a 2018 Movement Research Van Lier Emerging Artist of Color Fellow. Her work has been presented by Center for Performance Research, Gibney Dance (Work Up), Movement Research at Judson Memorial Church, Roulette (lec/dem), and AUNTS at Arts@Renaissance, Mount Tremper Arts, and New Museum. As a dancer, Ayano has had the pleasure to perform in works by artists Bell + Clixby, Phoebe Berglund, Kim Brandt, Jessica Cook, devynn emory, and Steven Reker in places like BAAD!, BRIC, CATCH at the Invisible Dog, the Guggenheim Museum, the Kitchen, Lincoln Center, MoMA PS1, Movement Research at Judson Memorial Church, New Museum, PS122, Pioneer Works, Roulette, and SculptureCenter.

About [DANCEROULETTE]
Roulette’s ongoing [DANCEROULETTE] series reflects our commitment to presenting experimental dance that we’ve held since our founding in 1978, particularly in regards to the collaborative efforts of composers and choreographers exploring the relationship between sound and movement, choreography and composition.

Vincent Chancey and Newman Taylor Baker: 2/4/THREE

What: The story of two musicians (French horn + washboard), both born on February 4, punctuated by family tales rooted in research and DNA testing.
When: Saturday, February 3, 2018, 8pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $15 Online $25 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org // (917) 267-0368

Brooklyn, NY – At the heart of 2/4/THREE are two musicians, Vincent Chancey and Newman Taylor Baker, in deep exploration of their instruments of choice—the French horn and the washboard, respectively. The evening will offer the first look at the work-in-progress performance, moving through original solo, duo, and ensemble pieces, occasionally punctuated by the choreography, spoken text, and audio visuals and rounded out with guitar and bass. The evening is also a birthday celebration for three musicians friends who share(d) the same birthday — Chancey, Taylor Baker, and John Stubblefield, who passed away from cancer in 2005. With an ensemble cast including Tomeka Reid on cello, Chancey and Taylor Baker will delve into story, fact, mystery, question, and discovery pulled from intimate family history.

Native Chicagoan Vincent Chancey moved to New York after a completion of a bachelor of music degree from the Southern Illinois University School of Music in classical studies. He learned the French horn from Dale Clevenger, principal French horn of the Chicago Symphony. Chancey has performed with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Pan American Symphony, the Harlem Symphony, the One World Symphony, the Zephyr Woodwind Quintet, and the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam. He received a National Endowment for the Arts grant to study jazz French Horn with jazz horn pioneer, Julius Watkins. He was awarded a Meet the Composer Grant for workshops and concerts, and a Chamber Music America/FACE French American Jazz Exchange Grant for a collaboration with French guitarist, Serge Pesce.

Newman Taylor Baker is a master percussionist known for his solo drum set project, Singin’ Drums, and Washboard XT, his current pursuit of 21st century music for the washboard. He started on the washboard in 2010 when working with the Ebony Hillbillies. Taylor Baker plays the washboard like a drum set, placing the instrument in his lap and using prepared shotgun shells on his each of his fingers. This year Newman adds the epithet “Washboard XT” to his name in the spirit of 19th century Black String bands players. Baker toured with his Washboard XT Szczecin to five cities in Poland and to three in Japan. Other appearances took place at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the Washboard Festival in Logon, Ohio and New York’s Arts for Art. Singin’ Drums is Newman’s enhanced, pitch-specific drum set configuration that has allowed him to develop a broad repertoire of music for solo drum set. This music can be heard on Drum Suite Life and The NYFA Collection on Innova. Baker was awarded a NYFA Music Fellowship and Meet The Composer Grant for this project.