Jim Staley & Zeena Parkins – “Designing dwellings that resonate with the life of people within them”. Jim Staley – trombone, Zeena Parkins – el. & acoustic harp.

Jim Staley, trombonist and composer, has resided in a lower Manhattan since 1978. His work has been primarily working with improvisation, crossing genres freely between post-modern classical music and avant-garde jazz. He has worked for many years with other highly experienced improvisers, both dancers and musicians, including Sally Silvers, Pooh Kaye, Simone Forti, Ikue Mori, Davey Williams, Shelley Hirsch, Phoebe Legere, John Zorn and many others. Staley’s recording projects include Blind Pursuits with Phoebe Legere and Borah Bergman; Mumbo Jumbo-different trio  combinations with Wayne Horvitz, Elliott Sharp, Shelley Hirsch, Samm Bennett, Ikue Mori, Bill Frisell, Fred Frith and John Zorn; Jim Staley's Don Giovanni, with Mori, Davey Williams, Zeena Parkins and Tenko, plus several more.
Staley has recorded with Fred Frith, Elliott Sharp's ensemble Carbon, and for John Zorn on several records including, Spillane, The Big Gundown, Cobra, The Little Lieutenant of the Living God (Weill/Zorn) and several others.  Staley also performs and records with the Tone Road Ramblers, a collaborative chamber-improv ensemble, together since 1981.

Zeena Parkins, multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, is a well-known pioneer of the electric harp and also has extended the language of the acoustic harp with the inventive use of unusual playing techniques, preparations, and layers of digital and analog processing. She accurately describes her harp as a "sound machine of limitless capacity" and has expanded her instrument using everything from household objects and hardware store finds to leslie cabinets, guitar pedals, numerous other digital processing hardware, and assorted software. Ms. Parkins has appeared on over 70 CDs and in hundreds of concerts in both large and small spaces all over the world. She is a sought after collaborator, performing with Jim O'Rourke, Nels Cline, Lee Renaldo, Kaffe Matthews (Weightless Animals), Thurston Moore, and Pauline Oliveros. Special projects have included touring and recording with Bjork (Vespertine, World Tour and Family Tree Tour), Tin Hat Trio (Book of Silk), Yoko Ono (Blueprint for a Sunrise), Don Byron, Butch Morris (International Comprovisation Ensemble), Elliott Sharp (Psycho~Acoustic, Orchestra Carbon), Ikue Mori (Phantom Orchard, B Side, Hex Kitchen), John Zorn (Cobra, Bezique, Darts, The Bribe) and Fred Frith (Soloist in Traffic Continues, Graphic Scores, Skeleton Crew and Keep the Dog).

Walter Thompson - An evening of Soundpainting with The Walter Thompson Orchestra, SP4tet (Soundpainting string quartet) and The New York Soundpainting Orchestra

New York composer Walter Thompson has been composing professionally for the past 32 years. He invented Soundpainting, a composing/conducting sign language for musicians, dancers, actors, poets, and visual artists working in the medium of structured improvisation. Thompson has performed and conducted his compositions with contemporary orchestras throughout the world and has taught Soundpainting at many universities and conservatories in Europe and America. He is founder of and composer/conductor for The Walter Thompson Orchestra, which has been together for over 20 years and which has been the key vehicle for Thompson’s work with Soundpainting.

Thompson has received awards from various organizations, including the Rockefeller Foundation, The University of Iowa, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation (“Artist as Catalyst”), the Jerome Foundation, Meet the Composer/Reader’s  Digest/Lila Atchison Wallace Commissioning Program, the National  Endowment for the Arts, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, The  American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and the New  York State Council on the Arts. In 2002 Thompson was presented with the prestigious Aplaudiment from Premis FAD Sebastià Gasch d’Arts Parateatrals in Barcelona, Spain, for his work with Soundpainting.

Nicole Zaray - The Day I Found Love A One-Women* Opera by Nicole Zaray - Music produced and written by Nicole Zaray. Pianist Ian Kane on synthesizers/keyboards. Visions of NYC by photographer Eva Mueller

Nicole scats about the blurry bobbing lights of the city while jam master jay and princess leia shriek backwards, that stride piano plays, and she does contact improvisation with images of midtown. You'll dance too, let your soul out, and laugh with the person next to you. Or at least spill wine on them. It's foundsound, trancy triphop and good old fashioned bar-room jazz rolled into one. But the loopiest time is had by all when she raps and sings outrageous bites of growing up in NYC. This is a weird and catchy one-women* opera with beats just under the mainstream radar and a sad but true take on urban independence as well as left-right brain theories.

*there's more than one of her. you'll see.

Nicole Zaray is a performer and composer who has also made several films. Known for philo-farcical-feminist storylines set to catchy, junkyard psy-fi trip-hop, Zaray's musical performance work - which she writes, produces and scores -  includes "The Prettiest Thing" and "Where is She?" both of which ran at PS 122 and Dixon Place and "Bread and Circus 3099" , which ran at The LaMama Annex. Her films include "Joe's Day," starring Debbie Harry, documentary on artist Mimi Gross -- "Mimi's World", & the documentary, "Work, Life and the Unknowable".
As a performer and vocalist her collaborations include "The Sticky Fingers of Time" by Hilary Brougher/Good Machine, which was seen at Venice International, Toronto International, and in over forty other cities worldwide. She was featured in "Under the Knife" by Theodora Skipitares, "Momento Mori" by Karen Finley, "Polly's Panic Attack" by Sebastian Stuart, and "Thurma" by Jack Shamblin. She was the featured vocalist on Moby's CDs "Feeling So Real" and "Next is the E" (Mute/Elektra). Nicole also teaches performance workshops at "Centro em Movimento" in Lisboa, Portugal.

Daniel Levin - Cellist Daniel Levin brings his quartet to Location One, performing works from his upcoming Hat Hut release. Levin, "a major new voice on his instrument and in improvised music" (Ed Hazell) leads the group, with Nate Wooley (trumpet), Matt Moran (vibes), and Joe Morris (bass).

Daniel Levin was born in 1974 and studied classical music intensively throughout high school, going on to the Mannes College of Music and the New England Conservatory. A chance experience improvising with a dancer at the New Arts Festival in Fort Meyers, Florida in the summer of 1993 inspired him to alter his view of himself as a musician. He now works as a composer and improviser, creating his own music as an interpretation of his experience of the world around him. He has worked with many major improvisers and composers in the creative music world. His recorded work includes Enter the Continent (Masashi Harada Condanction Ensemble) on EMANEM, and, as a leader, Don't Go it Alone (Daniel Levin Quartet) on Riti Records.

Reggie Nicholson - The Reggie Nicholson Brass Concept is an ensemble of some of the best brass players in New York City. Nicholson's blend of chamber brass and percussion with a touch of creative freedom transforms his music into a unique and personal adventure.

Reggie Nicholson Born in Chicago, IL, Nicholson is a long time member of the AACM and has performed with Henry Threadgill, Muhal Richard Abrams, Amina Claudine Myers, and Anthony Braxton. Beyond the AACM, Nicholson has performed with Roy Campbell, Myra Melford, Butch Morris, Yuko Fujiyama, Wilber Morris, James Spaulding and Brian Smith, just to name a few. Currently, Nicholson is composing and performing works for a number of different projects and has two recordings released, Unnecessary Noise Allowed and Percussion Peace.

Monika Heidemann - Vocalist Monika Heidemann twists together vocal improvisation and jazz sensibility with catchy pop melodies and the grind of rock n' roll, adding enough subconscious creativity to call into question the origin of her music. Her work simultaneously displays off-beat humor and smart, avant-garde arrangements, strong melodies and remarkable musical vocabularies. Heidermann’s ensemble boasts a brilliant group of improvisers, including Matt Moran, Khabu Doug-Young, Mike Savino and Take Toriyama. Her modern-day art songs tell stories by exploring the colliding worlds of the technical and spontaneous. She is awaiting the release of her first solo album with her band, featuring her compositions and songs by the late saxophonist, Steve Lacy.

Philip Fried - Corey Dargel

Philip Fried - A composer and experimental improviser on the string bass who combines free jazz, serial and atonal music, and electronics with an elegant lyricism. Fried is a founding member of the New York Artists Collective.

Also trained in classical composition, Fried has had performances and residencies with The Minnesota Orchestra, The Tanglewood Music Festival, The Festival at Sandpoint, June in Buffalo, Music of Our Time, and Centre Acanthes. His music has earned him awards and commissions from ASCAP and the American Composers Forum. This solo performance for Roulette will include electric string bass neat, alternating with real time analog sound processing.

Corey Dargel Corey Dargel is a composer, lyricist, and singer of "elegantly skewed electronic art songs" (Time Out New York) that "smartly and impishly blur the boundaries between contemporary classical idioms and pop" (New York Times).  His performances have been called "dangerously close to commercial viability" (Village Voice), and critics have lauded "how smoothly he slides between sincerity and irony" in his music (Time Out Chicago).

Dargel is also an accomplished new music vocalist and has performed works by Eve Beglarian, Pauline Oliveros, Brenda Hutchinson, k. terumi shorb, Phil Kline, Nicholas Brooke, and Philip Glass, and has organized multiple performances of John Cage's Songbooks featuring a variety of music and theater artists. For his Roulette debut, he is joined by César Alvarez (vocals, saxophones, guitars) and Sheila Donovan (vocals, guitars, harmonica).

Erik Nauman w/ Douglas Cohen

Erik Nauman w/ Douglas Cohen - Erik Nauman has been creating microtonal music with his Qwerty Sound Player, guitar and autoharp since the late 90s. He performs tonight with electronic composer Douglas Cohen. Line and Points explores three sonic textures in electronic and instrumental form, from lines of electrical current to points of percussive objects to clustered guitar notes that combine the two. Birdfield, a collaboration between Douglas and Erik, is a short piece that mixes twisted birdsongs with glacial microtonal guitar and other electronically generated sounds.

David Means w/ Steve Goldstein - Roland’s Ghost: Performers and amplified graphic sculpture-score.  David Means, digital horn and MIDI performance system In collaboration with Steve Goldstein, laptop sampling.

Roland’s Ghost is a soldier's tale of torture, betrayal and transformation, set in the Pyranees Mountains against a backdrop of ancient wisdom, classical literature and contemporary intrigue. On one level Roland’s Ghost is an attempt to cast a spirit of ‘l’histoire du soldat,’ a kind of universal soldier’s story, ranging from historical references to Charlemagne, to the poems of Wilfred Owen and E.A. Robinson, to the artist’s personal reflections on his experiences as an infantry soldier in Vietnam.

David Means David Means was born the same day the sound barrier was broken. He studied architecture at the University of Illinois, attending the design workshops of R. Buckminster Fuller and participating in the first Musicircus of John Cage in 1967.

After compulsory military service he returned to Illinois where he pursued a DMA in composition studying with Ben Johnston, Herbert Brun and Salvatore Martirano. An active composer, performer and educator, he has created numerous graphic scores and interactive performance installations, which have been exhibited and performed throughout the US, Europe, Australia and Asia at venues such as Documenta IX (Germany), New Music America (Minneapolis, Houston, Hartford), Dance Theater Workshop (New York City) and the Xi An Conservatory of Music (China). Since 1995 he has emphasized live electronics performance utilizing collaboration, improvisation and invented notational systems.  Since 1982 he has taught at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, as an associate professor of music and intermedia art and producer of the Strange Attractors Festivals of Experimental Intermedia Art. 

Steve Goldstein Steve Goldstein has performed professionally throughout the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean. His performance experience covers a wide range of musical genres, includes experimental, jazz and funk.  He has performed and recorded with artists such as Hamid Drake, Douglas Ewart, Joseph Jarman, Nirmala Rajsekar, Jan Gilbert, David Means, Gary Schulte, Marcus Wise, Jocelyn Gorham, Mixashawn and Carol Kaye.  Goldstein received thorough grounding in Western music at the University of Miami’s critically acclaimed Studio and Jazz program. After relocating to Minneapolis, Goldstein began extensive studies in the application and theory of South Indian rhythmic structures with world-renowned ghatam (tuned clay pot percussion instrument) master Sri T.H. Subash Chandran.

Jerome Cooper & William Parker - INSTRUMENTS OF COLOR /AUTUMN CEREMONIES Jerome Cooper - cherimia, balaphon, keyboards; William Parker - double reeds, doson ngoni, bass shakuhachi

Jerome Cooper's fruitful musical legacy with the Revolutionary Ensemble and stints with Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor and others reads like a who's who in cutting-edge jazz. Nowadays Cooper's polyrhythmic drumming and multitasking persona are prime factors in his mesmerizing solos. Wonderful combinations of Indonesian gamelan, West African timbres, jazz kit and garage band electronics surprise and merge in a satisfying post-everything style.

William Parker As Steve Greenlee of the Boston Globe stated in July 2002, “William Parker has emerged as the most important leader of the current avant-garde scene in jazz.” He works with many of the more important groups in this genre, some of the most prestigious being his own, including The Curtis Mayfield Project, Little Huey Creative Orchestra, In Order to Survive, and William Parker’s Quartet. In 1995 the Village Voice characterized William Parker as "the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time." He has performed with Ed Blackwell, Don Cherry, Bill Dixon, Milford Graves, Billy Higgins, and Sunny Murray, among others. In 1980 he became a member of the Cecil Taylor Unit, in which he played a prominent role for over a decade. Parker has released over 20 albums, most of them hitting #1 on the CMJ charts.