Category: Press Releases

Mari Kimura: Mugic in Hues

What: An interactive audio-video show for violin + motion sensor Mugic, featuring traditional Japanese ceramics.
When: Monday, November 6, 2017, 8:00pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $25/20 Online $20/15 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: General Admission $20, Members/Students/Seniors $15, $25/20 Tickets at the door

Brooklyn, NY – Violinist Mari Kimura’s Mugic in Hues is comprised of two world premieres — “Ao-Hagi” (Blue ‘Hagi’), inspired by the work of Japanese master ceramic artist Susumu Notomi, and “Rossby Waving,” taken from Rossby waves, a natural atmospheric phenomenon relating to rotation of the planet. Kimura will perform using Mugic (Musical Gesture Interface Control), a motion sensor expanding the expressive capabilities of instrumental performance, developed in conjunction with physicist Liubo Borissov. The Mugic sensor tracks the intrinsic musical gestures and physical gestures of the performer, interacting with interactive processing of audio and video.

The program will be preceded by pre-concert talk with Susumu Notomi explaining the tradition and the beauty of “Ao-Hagi,” the Blue ‘Hagi’ ceramics from Japan. A prestigious prize-winning ceramic artist in Japan, Mr. Notomi creates renown blue-colored ceramics from ‘Hagi’ area of the Yamaguchi Prefecture in the western Japan.

Mari Kimura is at the forefront of violinists who are extending the technical and expressive capabilities of the instrument. Notably, she has mastered the production of pitches that sound up to an octave below the violin’s lowest string without retuning. This technique, which she calls Subharmonics, has earned Kimura considerable renown in the concert music world and beyond. She is also a pioneer in the field of interactive computer music and an internationally acclaimed a soloist and recitalist in both standard and contemporary repertoire. As of July 2017, Kimura is Professor of Music at University of California, Irvine’s “Integrated Composition, Improvisation and Technology” (ICIT) program, Music Department at the Claire Trevor School of the Arts.

Liubo Borissov is an associate professor at Pratt Institute’s Department of Digital Arts. He received baccalaureate degrees in Mathematics and Physics from Caltech and a doctorate in Physics from Columbia University, where he also studied electro-acoustic music at Columbia’s Computer Music Center. He holds a masters in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where he was a Global Vilar Fellow in the performing arts. In his works, he explores the interface between art, science and technology.

Chris Lightcap & SuperBigmouth

What: With SuperBigmouth, Chris Lightcap combines and composes for his two working groups, Bigmouth and Superette.
When: Friday, November 3, 2017, 8:00pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $25/20 Online $20/15 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: General Admission $20, Members/Students/Seniors $15, $25/20 Tickets at the door

Brooklyn, NY – Bassist and composer Chris Lightcap debuts SuperBigmouth, a new ensemble comprised of two groups, Bigmouth and Superette. SuperBigmouth consolidates Lightcap’s affinity for experimental composition and improvisation, as well as his love for west African music and pop songwriting.

Featuring tenor saxophonists, Tony Malaby and Chris Cheek, keyboardist Craig Taborn, and drummer Gerald Cleaver, Bigmouth has performed, recorded and toured together for the past 20 years. The group’s most recent album, Epicenter, was named one of the best albums of 2015 by the New York Times, NPR, and Los Angeles Times. Assembled in 2013, Superette is Lightcap’s all electric band featuring guitarists Jonathan Goldberger and Curtis Hasselbring alongside drummer Dan Rieser. The group’s forthcoming self-titled album will be released in the spring of 2018 and features special guests Nels Cline and John Medeski.

Chris Lightcap is a double bassist, bass guitarist, and composer from Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Currently based in New York, Lightcap has worked with Marc Ribot, Regina Carter, Craig Taborn, Glen Hansard, Mark Turner, John Medeski, Jason Moran, Tomasz Stanko, Chris Potter, Butch Morris, Ben Monder and more. As a bandleader / composer, he has produced four critically acclaimed albums; his playing is featured on over 70 albums.

Tredici Bacci: Soundtracks to Italian Silent Films

What: The 14-piece band Tredici Bacci, lead by Simon Hanes, celebrates the sounds of 1960s-70s popular Italian culture.
When: Wednesday, November 1, 2017, 8:00pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $25/20 Online $20/15 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: General Admission $20, Members/Students/Seniors $15, $25/20 Tickets at the door

Brooklyn, NY – 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.

Charmaine Lee: Ceremony with Conrad Tao // Duo with Nate Wooley

What: Vocalist Charmaine Lee premieres Ceremony in collaboration with Conrad Tao and Nate Wooley.
When: Monday, October 30, 2017, 8:00pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $25/20 Online $20/15 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: General Admission $20, Members/Students/Seniors $15, $25/20 Tickets at the door

Brooklyn, NY – Vocalist Charmaine Lee premieres Ceremony, a collaborative work developed with pianist and composer Conrad Tao. Using spatialization, live signal processing, and fixed media, the piece explores a variety of sonic environments — each a meditation on the visceral tactility of vocal and electronic sound. Ceremony is a celebration of hybridity, weaving together diverse influences from ASMR, drone, ambient, and the 80s power ballad. The evening will open with an improvised duo performance by Lee and Nate Wooley. The duo will explore eclectic aesthetic territory together, comfortably moving between rapid-fire free improvisation and the sober austerity of Japanese onkyo.

Charmaine Lee is an improvising vocalist from Sydney, Australia. Her work favors a uniquely personal approach to vocal expression, concerned with spontaneity, playfulness, and risk-taking. She has performed with leading improvisers Joe Morris and Nate Wooley, and maintains ongoing collaborations with contemporaries Lester St. Louis and Zach Rowden. She currently resides in New York.

Nate Wooley was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, a town of 2,000 people in the timber country of the Pacific Northwest. He began playing trumpet professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist, at the age of 13. He has since become one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the burgeoning Brooklyn jazz, improv, noise, and new music scenes. He has performed regularly with icons such as John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Eliane Radigue, Ken Vandermark, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, and Yoshi Wada, as well as being a collaborator with some of the brightest lights of his generation like Chris Corsano, C. Spencer Yeh, Peter Evans, and Mary Halvorson.

Conrad Tao has appeared worldwide as a pianist and composer, and has been dubbed a musician of “probing intellect and open-hearted vision” by the New York Times, a “thoughtful and mature composer” by NPR, and “ferociously talented” by Time Out New York. His recent recitals and chamber performances—including appearances at the Aspen Music Festival, Cliburn Concerts, the Gulbenkian in Lisbon, the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and the Washington Performing Arts Society—comprise music by Frederic Rzewski, Liszt, Julia Wolfe, Charles Ives, Mozart, Pierre Boulez, a new commissioned work by Felipe Lara, and more.

[DANCEROULETTE] Nami Yamamoto: Headless Wolf

What: Choreographer Nami Yamamoto presents Headless Wolf, a new work about learning to find beauty in both life and death.
When: Wednesday, October 25—Friday, October 27, 2017, 8:00pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $25/20 Online $20/15 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: General Admission $20, Members/Students/Seniors $15, $25/20 Tickets at the door

Brooklyn, NY – Choreographer Nami Yamamoto presents Headless Wolf, a new work exploring the power of fate and discovering beauty in both life and death. In development since 2010, Headless Wolf draws from Yamamoto’s own experience of becoming a mother within close proximity of losing her father.

Originally from Japan, choreographer and artistic director Nami Yamamoto graduated from New York University in 1993 with a MA in Dance Education. Since then, her work has been presented at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, P.S. 122, Movement Research at Judson Church, The Kitchen, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, Museum of the Art in Philadelphia, Studio 303 in Montreal, UC Irvine, Dance Studio Moga in Japan, Contemporary Dance Festival Free Dance in Ukraine, Walker Art Center and Gibney Dance Center. She has been nurtured and inspired by her residency experience at Asian Pacific Performance Exchange in UCLA, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Movement Research, Dance Wave in Japan, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Summer Theater Lab in UC Santa Barbara, and Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography. As a dancer, she has enjoyed working with choreographers such as Yoshiko Chuma, David Dorfman, Patricia Hoffbauer, Clarinda Mac Low, Victoria Marks, David Neumann, Sara Pearson & Patrik Widrig, Karen Sherman, Cydney Wilkes, Christopher Williams, Yasuko Yokoshi, and many others. In 2004, she debuted as a puppeteer in Dan Hurlin’s Hiroshima Maiden, which toured in 2005-2006. She also performed for Lake Simon’s puppet piece, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, at Here Art Center. In 2014, she debuted at Lincoln Center as a puppeteer and dancer of The Oldest Boy written by Sarah Ruhl and directed by Rebecca Taichman. Currently, she teaches in the New York City public school system through Movement Research’s Dance Maker’s program.

Brooklyn Rider: Spontaneous Symbols

What: String quartet Brooklyn Rider presents five new works influenced by Bach, Cage, Zorn, Xenakis, Minor White, and more.
When: Thursday, October 19, 2017, 8:00pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $25/20 Online $20/15 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: General Admission $20, Members/Students/Seniors $15, $25/20 Tickets at the door

Brooklyn, NY – Veteran string quartet Brooklyn Rider presents Spontaneous Symbols, an evening of new works composed for the intrepid ensemble. Often noted for their global collaborations and provocative readings of the standard repertoire, the performance will showcase the quartet at the core of their mission — bringing new works to life. The evening will feature works by Battles veteran Tyondai Braxton, Brooklyn Rider’s own Colin Jacobsen, Bang On A Can founder Evan Ziporyn, electro-acoustic composer Paula Matthusen, and Brooklyn-based Kyle Sanna.

Brooklyn Rider combines an eclectic repertoire with a gripping performance style that is attracting legions of fans and drawing critical acclaim from classical, world and rock critics. NPR credits Brooklyn Rider with “recreating the 300-year-old form of string quartet as a vital and creative 21st-century ensemble.” The group has performed in venues as varied as Carnegie Hall, San Francisco Jazz Festival, Telluride Bluegrass Festival, London’s Wigmore Hall and the South By Southwest. In 2015, the group celebrated its tenth anniversary with the groundbreaking multi-disciplinary project Brooklyn Rider Almanac, for which it recorded and toured 15 specially commissioned works. Other recording projects include the quartet’s debut recording in 2008, Passport, followed by Dominant Curve in 2010, Seven Steps in 2012, and A Walking Fire in 2013. The ensemble has appeared on two albums with banjo legend Bela Fleck and in 2016 released The Fiction Issue with singer- songwriter Gabriel Kahane, and so many things with celebrated mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie von Otter.

Kelly Moran: Hallucinations

What: Pianist Kelly Moran presents Hallucinations, influenced by states of altered consciousness.
When: Monday, October 16, 2017, 8:00pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $25/20 Online $20/15 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: General Admission $20, Members/Students/Seniors $15, $25/20 Tickets at the door

Brooklyn, NY – Rising experimental pianist Kelly Moran presents Hallucinations, influenced by states of altered consciousness and their effect on musical processes. The program will feature prepared piano, synthesizers, and recorded electronics in front of video projections.

Kelly Moran is a composer and pianist from New York. As the sole engineer and producer of her five solo albums, her intricately arranged electro-acoustic compositions have been described as accomplishing “the rare feat of making the work of a single individual sound like the artistic output of a veritable creative army.” As a pianist, Moran specializes in works that employ extended techniques and prepared piano. Her album Bloodroot, released by Telegraph Harp Records in March 2017, received praise from Pitchfork, NPR, The Log Journal, KEXP, and more. In recent years, she has performed as a bassist in Weasel Walter’s no-wave outfit Cellular Chaos, and keyboardist for avant-rock band Voice Coils. Recent collaborations include projects with Toby Driver (Kayo Dot), Charlie Looker (Extra Life), and acclaimed pianist Margaret Leng-Tan. Moran completed her undergraduate degree at University of Michigan-Ann Arbor where she studied piano performance, sound engineering, and composition. In 2010, Moran received a fellowship for the MFA program in Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology at University of California-Irvine. Moran works as a freelance pianist in NYC and is on staff as an accompanist at Barnard College and the Martha Graham School for Contemporary Dance.

ACFNY Moving Sounds Festival: Ars Electronica / Eyebeam Edition: MSHR / YATTA / BR-Laser

What: The opening night of Austrian Cultural Forum New York‘s annual festival of music, visual media and aesthetic dialogue.
When: Sunday, October 15, 2017, 8:00pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $25/20 Online $20/15 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: General Admission $20, Members/Students/Seniors $15, $25/20 Tickets at the door

Brooklyn, NY – Following Suzanne Ciani’s triumphant concert last fall, Roulette welcomes back Austrian Cultural Forum New York’s Moving Sounds Festival, an annual international festival of music, visual media and aesthetic dialogue that features emerging and pioneering artists focused on electronically generated music, engaging improvisation, and cutting edge technology. This year’s festival is co-curated by Austrian electronic arts center Ars Electronica and Brooklyn-based nonprofit technology studio Eyebeam. The opening night of the festival, taking place on Sunday, features audiovisual experimentalists BR-Laser, MSHR, and Yatta.

BR-Laser is an engineer, visual sound artist and cofounder of Kunstverein NewJörg Vienna. He is a regular guest at international experimental music festivals, music fairs and soldering workshops, with performance highlights including Ars Electonica (Linz), Superbooth (Berlin), Modular Days (Barcelona), and Machines in Music (New York). MSHR is the art collective of Birch Cooper and Brenna Murphy. The duo build and explore systems to reveal pathways toward ecstatic sensory experience, working at the intersection of digital sculpture, analog circuitry and ceremonial performance. Their physical projects revolve around analog light-audio feedback systems built from macro-arrangements of our sculptural synthesizers. On the virtual side, MSHR weaves computer generated portraits of inter-dimensional entities and psychedelic realms. These physical and virtual pursuits inform each other deeply, unfolding a hyper-shape that houses both. YATTA is a Houston-born interdisciplinary artist, digipoet, and musician currently based in Brooklyn. Using incantations born of loop pedal drones, folk acoustics, and ecstatic beats, they alchemize and creolize jazz vocals with Krio cries to create music to lie down in.

The Austrian Cultural Forum New York is the main cultural embassy of the Republic of Austria in New York and the United States. With its architectural landmark building in Midtown Manhattan, ACFNY’s facilities include a multi-level gallery space, a theater, and its own library. Hosting more than 100 events annually, ACFNY is one of the most important places to encounter Austrian art, culture, and tradition for an American audience.

Tom Blancarte // Peter Evans: Being & Becoming

What: A new ensemble led by Peter Evans featuring three young virtuoso instrumentalists, plus a solo set from Tom Blancarte.
When: Wednesday, September 27,, 2017, 8:00pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $25/20 Online $20/15 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: General Admission $20, Members/Students/Seniors $15, $25/20 Tickets at the door

Brooklyn, NY – Acclaimed trumpeter and composer Peter Evans debuts a new ensemble featuring some of the most creative and virtuosic of the new generation of players. Featuring Joel Ross on vibraphone, Jordan Morton on bass and Max Jaffe on drums, Being & Becoming marks a new chapter in Evans’ work as a player and composer. The evening will open with Tom Blancarte premiering a new piece for solo bass following the success of his new album, The Shortening of the Way.

Peter Evans is a trumpeter, improviser, and composer based in New York City. As part of a broad, hybridized scene of musical experimentation, Evans’ work cuts across a wide range of modern musical practices and traditions. Peter is committed to the simultaneously self-determining and collaborative nature of musical improvisation as a compositional tool, and works with an ever-expanding group of musicians and composers in the creation of new music. His primary groups as a leader are the Peter Evans Ensemble and Being & Becoming (with Joel Ross and Max Jaffe). He is a member of the cooperative groups Pulverize the Sound (with Mike Pride and Tim Dahl) and Rocket Science (with Evan Parker, Craig Taborn and Sam Pluta). Evans has released recordings on his own record label, More is More, since 2011.

For nearly a decade, bassist Tom Blancarte has been contributing a vivid palette of dark frequencies to New York’s creative music scene. A native of Austin, Texas, his formative years included a steady diet of fantasy and sci-fi novels and video games, and later on a total immersion in death and black metal. Accordingly, Blancarte has cultivated a demented and visceral instrumental practice that transcends the experimental bass canon and pushes improvisatory art to new extremes.

Lisa Mezzacappa: Glorious Ravage

What: Lisa Mezzacappa presents Glorious Ravage, an evening-length song cycle inspired by female explorers.
When: Thursday, October 12, 2017, 8:00pm
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $25/20 Online $20/15 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: General Admission $20, Members/Students/Seniors $15, $25/20 Tickets at the door

Brooklyn, NY – San Francisco composer + bassist Lisa Mezzacappa presents Glorious Ravage, an immersive evening-length song cycle for a large ensemble of California improvisers with films commissioned from Bay Area experimental filmmakers. Glorious Ravage features original compositions by Mezzacappa, and takes as its inspiration the writings of female adventurers near the turn of the 20th century, who trekked to the wildest parts of the earth to discover, escape, and lose themselves.

Glorious Ravage is the product of extensive collaboration between Mezzacappa and four moving image artists—Konrad Steiner, Alfonso Alvarez, Kathleen Quillian, and Janis Crystal Lipzin—all significant figures in the Bay Area experimental film and video community for decades, working in video, animation and manipulated found and archival film footage. The ensemble features fourteen virtuoso instrumentalists, plus versatile Brooklyn vocalist Fay Victor.

Lisa Mezzacappa is a San Francisco Bay Area composer, bassist, bandleader and producer. Called “one of the most imaginative figures on the Bay Area creative jazz scene” by the San Jose Mercury News and “a Bay Area treasure” by KQED National Public Radio, she has been an active part of California’s vibrant experimental music community for more than 15 years. Mezzacappa’s activities as a composer and bandleader include ethereal chamber music, electro-acoustic works, avant-garde jazz, music for groups from duo to large ensemble, and collaborations with film, dance, sculpture and installation art. Recent projects include works inspired by noir crime fiction; scientific processes on micro and cosmic scales; Victorian lady adventurers; and vintage Italian science fiction comics. She has released her music on the New World, Clean Feed, NoBusiness, Leo, and NotTwo record labels, and has received support or her work from the MAP Fund, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Aaron Copland Fund.