Judy Dunaway

“Judy Dunaway: Mother of Balloon Music” CD Release Party

In celebration of her upcoming CD on Innova Records, Roulette presents a concert featuring Judy Dunaway (balloons) in improvisational duets and trios with Tom Chiu (violin) and Damian Catera (electronics.) Since 1990, Dunaway has created over forty compositions for balloons as sound producers and also has made them her main instrument for improvisation. She has presented her work throughout North American and Europe at many well-known venues and festivals including Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, The Edna and Roy Disney Center, the Bang On A Can Festival, the Guelph Jazz Festival, Podewil and ZKM. Her discography includes recordings on the CRI and Outer Realm labels. Ms. Dunaway holds a M.A. in Music from Wesleyan University and a Ph.D. in Music Composition from SUNY Stony Brook.

Ryoko Mizutani

Ryuko Mizutani studied both classical and modern koto music under the world-renowned koto masters Kazue and the late Tadao Sawai. As a member of the Kazue Sawai Koto Ensemble, she has performed in Europe, South Asia, and the US in festivals of traditional and new music (Bang on a Can, etc.) In 1999 Ryuko received a fellowship from the Japanese Government Overseas Study Program for Artists to study improvisation and new music with Anthony Braxton and Alvin Lucier at Wesleyan University.

Brenda Hutchinson

Composer/sound artist Brenda Hutchinson performs with her Long Tube, a self-built, invented instrument that extends the voice FAR beyond the body, using sculptural, acoustic and electronic means. She also will present documentation from The Bell Project, a 5-week long cross-country performance piece involving collaborations and interactions with random strangers. Check out: http://thebellproject.blogspot.com/

Hutchinson is a composer and sound artist whose work has been presented at international festivals in New Zealand, Europe, Latin America and Canada. Venues in the United States include Lincoln Center, Merkin Concert Hall and The Kitchen (in New York,) New Langton Arts, The Lab and the Exploratorium (in San Francisco) and "Soundprint" on NPR.

Her works include performance and composition for dance, opera, film, video and radio and multi-media interactive installations. Her work makes extensive use of language, stories and ambient and sampled sounds. Brenda often acts as a catalyst for experiences involving other people, whose stories and/or performances are recorded and shared with other audiences through Brenda's work in performance and radio. She continues to develop a body of work she refers to as “Collaborating with Strangers” that is characterized by large-scale or long-term interactive works with people she doesn’t know.

Brenda received the Gracie Allen award from the American Women in Broadcast Television and Radio. In 2005, she was awarded the Ucross Residency. Other commissions and awards have come from the American Composers' Forum, National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer/Reader's Digest, the McKnight foundation, NYSCA, NYFA and California Arts Council.

Since 2002, Brenda has been on the faculty at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. She has been an artist in residence at San Quentin Prison, Headlands Center for the Arts, Harvestworks, the Exploratorium and Djerassi. Recordings of her work are available through TELLUS, Deep Listening, the Aerial, O.O. DISCS, Frog Peak Music and Leonardo Music Magazine.

Adam Rudolph - GO: ORGANIC ORCHESTRA

“This is it. Percussionist Adam Rudolph has been watering Go: Organic Orchestra for several years, and it keeps growing. The concept combines Rudolph’s lush harmonies and vivid structures as he conducts his large semicircle of players via cue scores and hand signals to produce a surging, shifting sound with plenty of room for individual spark.” (Greg Burk, LA Weekly)  

“Those attending the Venice (California) concert  got a sense that something great was transpiring. The music, performed by a large ensemble of wind and percussion players, rose like vines from hand drummer Adam Rudolph’s written instructions and hand signals. And it is truly organic – a blend of  gentle sustained dissonance, heaven-crashing rhythm jams, and individual improvisations. No joke: a startling and involving development in roots music, with more to follow.” (LA Weekly)

ADAM RUDOLPH: http://www.metarecords.com/adam.html

GO: ORGANIC ORCHESTRA: http://www.metarecords.com/go.html

Go: Organic Orchestra is a 25-30 piece ensemble consisting of woodwinds (flutes, clarinets -- B-flat, bass and alto -- bansuri flute, bassoon, oboe and bamboo flutes,) string players and hand drummers/percussionists (udu drums, congas, drum kit, djembes, riq, frame drums, tabla, dumbek, bata and gongs.) The Orchestra is made up of many of Los Angeles’s leading performers, from both “jazz” and “classical” backgrounds as well as young developing musicians. Guest performers have included Yusef Lateef, percussionist Big Black, poet Saul Williams, singer Dwight Tribble and flutist James Newton.
 
The music of Go: Organic Orchestra is inspired by observing and reflecting upon the elements and qualities of nature. The invention of the notation/conducting system grows out of Rudolph's ongoing desire to experiment with new creative processes. In concert, the conducting is performed in service of the moment; that is, listening and imagination inform the unfolding of musical gestures. The musicians are called upon to bring forth their ideas and experiences. The group is the winner of the LA Weekly Music Award for an Outstanding World Music Artist (2003 & 2005.)
 
Originally from Chicago, composer and hand drummer/percussionist Adam Rudolph has appeared at festivals and concerts throughout North & South America, Europe, Africa and Japan. In 1988 Rudolph began his association with the legendary Yusef Lateef, which lasts to this day. He has recorded fourteen albums with Dr. Lateef and has performed worldwide with Dr. Lateef in ensembles ranging from their acclaimed duo concerts to appearing as guest soloist with Köln, Atlanta and Detroit symphony orchestras.
 
Since the 1970s Rudolph has been developing his unique syncretic approach to hand drums in creative collaborations with many masters of cross-cultural and improvised music such as Sam Rivers, Pharaoh Sanders, L. Shankar and Fred Anderson. He especially is known for his innovative small group and duo collaborations with Don Cherry, Jon Hassel, Wadada Leo Smith and Omar Sosa. Since 1992 Rudolph has lead his own performing ensemble, “Adam Rudolph’s Moving Pictures,” featuring drummer Hamid Drake, Ralph Jones, and Venice-based Butoh dance innovator Oguri. The group has performed in both Europe and the United States, and has released several CDs featuring Rudolph’s compositions. In 1995 he premiered The Dreamer, an Opera based on Friedreich Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy.
 
In 1990 he was commissioned by the LA Festival to create and lead Vashti Percussion Ensemble with percussionist masters from Bali, Iran, India, Lebanon and Java. The ensemble still performs annually. In the 1980s Rudolph was artistic director of “World of Percussion” under the auspices of World Music Institute at Symphony Space (NYC.)
 
In 2001 Rudolph founded Go: Organic Orchestra, a 22-piece woodwind and percussion ensemble dedicated to developing his unique compositional and rhythmic concepts in a large group format. In concert, Rudolph improvisationally conducts the ensemble using his own innovative process. The group has recorded three CDs to date.
 
Adam Rudolph is known as one the early innovators in what is now called “World Music.” In 1977 he co-founded The Mandingo Griot Society with Gambian Kora Griot, Foday Musa Suso, one of the first bands to combine African and American music. In 1988, he recorded the first fusion of American and Gnawa (Moroccan) music with Sintir player and singer Hassan Hakmoun. From 1998 to 2001 Rudolph performed at the Festival D’Essaouira in Morocco in collaboration with many leading Gnawa Maleems (masters.) For two of those years he was artistic director and curator of “Calling Across the Water” an acoustic collaboration between American, Bambara and Gnawa musicians at that festival.
 
He has received grants and compositional commissions from the Rockefeller Foundation, Meet the Composer, Mary Flagler Cary Trust, the NEA, Arts International, Durfee Foundation and American Composers Forum.

Photo credit: Noureddine El Warari

Ben Goldberg

Clarinetist/composer Ben Goldberg presents new works for quintet and pieces from his recent CD, the door, the hat, the chair, the fact (Cryptogramophone.) The recording and tonight’s program feature a set of compositions dedicated to Steve Lacy, with whom Goldberg studied and worked closely. Dubbed “one of the greatest clarinetists I've ever heard" by John Zorn, Goldberg’s New Klezmer Trio “kicked open the door for radical experiments with Ashkenazi roots music” (San Francisco Chronicle.) He currently works the Tin Hat Trio, the Myra Melford Quintet and the trio, Plays Monk.  A leading figure in “Radical Jewish Music,” Goldberg has played with everyone from George Lewis to Masada to Alvin Curran. Tonight with Carla Kihlstedt (violin,) Rob Sudduth (tenor saxophone,) Trevor Dunn (bass) and Ches Smith (drums.)

Christopher McIntyre

Composer and trombonist Christopher McIntyre has been developing a number of large ensemble projects in the past few years, both as a leader and collaborator. Several of them will fill Roulette's stage during this event, including TILT Brass Band, Lotet and Ne(x)tworks. A thread that carries through each group is both technical and spiritual: mapping the space between composition and improvisation. In the process of making pieces for these bands, an immersive and colorful aesthetic has emerged in McIntyre's work. Tonight's program offers a full evening of this repertoire, as well as new works commissioned by Roulette with support from the Jerome Foundation and performed by an impressive array of new music’s heaviest-hitters, including Joan La Barbara, Cornelius Dufallo, Miguel Frasconi, Peter Evans and Nate Wooley.
 
The first half of the performance features scores written for the composer/performer band Ne(x)tworks. The set includes the premiere of Herkimer, a hybrid multimedia score of cellular and strategic notation. Ne(x)tworks is Joan La Barbara (voice,) Stephen Gosling (piano,) Kenji Bunch (viola,) Yves Dharamraj (cello,) Cornelius Dufallo & Ariana Kim (violins,) Shelley Burgon (harp,) Miguel Frasconi (glass instruments,) Peter Evans (trumpet) and McIntyre (trombone.)
 
Members of the McIntyre-led ensembles TILT Brass Band and Lotet, along with some very special guests, join forces on the second half to perform a set of isomorphic musical structures. Grouped in pairs, the instrumentation on hand fuses the timbral bliss of TILT with the low frequency undulations of Lotet's live-electronics. With: Nate Wooley & CJ Camerieri (flugel horn & trumpet,) Curtis Hasselbring & Joe Fiedler (trombones,)  Ron Caswell, Joe Exely (tubas,) Charles Waters (bass clarinet,) Colin Stetson (bass saxophone,) Kato Hideki, John King (electronics,) Ryan Sawyer, Mick Rossi (percussion) and McIntyre (trombone & conductor.) Visit http://www.cmcintyre.com for more info.

Robert Dick & Ursel Schlicht

Flutist/composer Robert Dick and internationally acclaimed pianist Ursel Schlicht, “two virtuosi whose talent for stretching their instruments and minds allows them to paint with more colors and textures than flute and piano have any right to expect" (Gene Santoro) present an evening of music that integrates composition and improvisation and radically expands the sound world and expressive possibilities of flute and piano, featuring piccolo to contrabass flute with inside & out piano.
 
Ursel Schlicht is an internationally active pianist, composer & improviser.  She has played improvised music, jazz, new music and world music throughout Europe, North America, Russia, Mexico and Australia, and has recorded on Leo, Cadence, CIMP, Hybrid, Konnex, Muse-Eek and Nemu Records.   
 
Current projects include duos with Robert Dick (Photosphere, Nemu Records 2005,) Reuben Radding (Einstein’s Dreams, Konnex 2005,) Bruce Arnold (String Theory, Muse-Eek 2005) and Hans Tammen (celebrating 15 years of collaboration with a special concert in Germany this fall,) as well as her ensemble Ex Tempore (Jamie Baum, Kyoko Kitamura, Balla Kouyate, Thomson Kneeland, Ravish Momin, Take Toriyama,) No Fear Act (Ned Rothenberg, Robert Dick, Tomas Ulrich, Ken Filiano, Klaus Kugel,) projects with the Laura Andel Orchestra and more.  Schlicht has written for large and small ensembles, dance theater and improvisational scores for silent film. She holds a doctorate from the University of Hamburg and is currently teaching courses on Improvisation and Music & Gender at Ramapo College. Please visit http://www.urselschlicht.com

Robert Dick -- improviser, composer, author, teacher and inventor -- is known worldwide for redefining the flute, creating revolutionary visions of its musical role. His music is rooted in free improvisation, new jazz and classical music, contemporary and traditional. Dick has played solo concerts throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia. He’s released numerous solo recordings and performed and recorded with New Winds, Tambastics, Oscura Luminosa, the Soldier String Quartet, the A.D.D. Trio, King Chubby, Ursel Schlicht, Paul Giger, Jaron Lanier, Randy Raine-Reusch, Barry Guy, Mari Kimura, Klaus Kugel and many others.
 
Dick’s many pedagogical works, including the book The Other Flute: A Performance Manual of Contemporary Techniques, are considered the standard bearers in their field. Current compositional projects, all commissioned, include a woodwind quintet, saxophone quartet and a piece for solo piccolo.
 
For the past quarter century, Dick has contributed to the evolution of the flute.  Emerson Musical Instruments manufactures the Robert Dick Model bass flute. Brannen Brothers Flutemakers, the leading maker of fine flutes worldwide, produces his invention, the telescoping Glissando Headjoint®, which acts as a “whammy bar” for the flute. Please visit http://www.robertdick.net

JENNIFER CHOI, MARCO CAPPELLI & VONGKU PAK

Tonight’s collaboration brings together compelling creations by three uniquely individual musicians for the first time. The adventurous, unrelentingly innovative violinist Jennifer Choi, known for her soulful and direct interpretations of classical new music and improvisations in the Susie Ibarra Trio, plays alongside the imaginative, ultra-dexterous Marco Cappelli (Extreme Guitar Project) and fuses their virtuosic string playing with the dynamic folk rhythms of Vongku Pak (Korean drums) in written and improvised collaborations in this not to be missed event.
 
Jennifer Choi has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of solo violin, chamber music and creative improvisation. Dedicated to becoming a master performer of works by her contemporaries, her playing concentrates on the goal of taking new music to another level of understanding. For the past ten years, she has performed and recorded over fifty new compositions, including the World Premiere of Goetia, one of John Zorn’s most recent and challenging works for solo violin. Since graduating from the Juilliard School in 2000, she has daringly ventured into the world of improvisation, making use of her virtuosic technique in groundbreaking collaborations with the likes of John Zorn, Ikue Mori, Leo Wadada Smith, Erik Friedlander and Susie Ibarra.
 
After years of intense studies (first at Conservatorio di S. Cecilia in Rome and then konzert-klasse at the Musik Akademie in Basel with Oscar Ghiglia,) Marco Cappelli has been the protagonist of an extraordinary artistic path, along which he smoothly oscillates from the most rigorous music writing to the practice of improvisation. Among the founders of the acclaimed Italian contemporary music group Ensemble Dissonanzen, Cappelli currently lives in New York, where he is involved with the contemporary and avant-garde music scenes.  His projects include his solo project, EGP - Extreme Guitar Project - Music from Downtown New York (ten original compositions dedicated to him,) as well as his collaborations with Jim Pugliese’s Phase 3, with Butch Morris’s Nublu Orchestra and with bassist Kato Hideki, with whom Marco co-leads the Tremolo of Joy quartet. Cappelli has recorded for the Italian label TDS as well as the prestigious American label Mode Records.
 
Traditional Korean dance and drumming are artistic and expressive art forms, with roots drawing from and combining the traditions of shamanistic ritual, farmers' music and folk storytelling. Trained by master drummers in Korea in various styles of poongmul and samulnori, Vongku Pak brings to us this dynamic and dramatic music. Pak's music tonight brings to fruition his visionary ideas about performing traditional Korean folk music along with various other world music styles. Pak is the artistic director of VP Performing Arts Production Co. and has been featured in international tours across fifteen different European countries, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Carnegie Hall, the Out-of-Doors Festival at Lincoln Center and on Fox TV's Good Day New York. He can be heard on recordings on the Xtatica and Ishle Yi Park labels.
 
Check out: http://www.jenniferchoi.com, http://www.marcocappelli.com & http://www.koreandrum.org/

Aaron Siegel & Chris Peck

Composers Aaron Siegel and Chris Peck share an interest in methodical, process-based compositions that unfold over an extended period of time. Both artists work with unconventional acoustic sound sources, including plastic recorders, undisciplined singing, resonant metals and ceramic bowls. The two new works presented this evening are the result of their collaborative effort to deal with a large ensemble of performers from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds, including untrained musicians and self-described “non-artists.”

Aaron Siegel is a Brooklyn-based composer and percussionist. His most recent concert of new works was a collaboration with composer Sabrina Schroeder at the Chocolate Factory in Long Island City in May 2006. He is currently at work on a new composition for the chamber ensemble Till by Turning that will be presented in a series of concerts in March 2007. A forthcoming recording of recent works entitled Every Morning, A History will be released in February 2006 on Peacock Recordings. Check out: http://www.aaronsiegel.net

Chris Peck is a Michigan-born, Brooklyn-based composer primarily concerned with listening, field recording, live performance and improvisation with the computer, collaboration with visual and dance artists and organizing large ensembles. He makes music with Manpack Variant (with Jaime Fennelly) and x2764 the band and directs the Brooklyn Adult Recorder Choir, a thirty-member acoustic noise ensemble, with choreographer Beth Gill. His collaborative work includes commissioned scores for choreographers John Jasperse, David Dorfman and Ming Yang/Dance Forum Taipei, installations with Fritz Welch and The Intensity Police Are Working My Last Gay Nerve with video artist Charles Atlas. Check out: http://www.intermittentmusic.com

HANS TAMMEN & THIRD EYE ORCHESTRA - AVAILABLE FORMS FOR JAZZ

Hans Tammen's latest project, the Third Eye Orchestra, is inspired by Earle Brown's Available Forms. In tonight's performance, various sections of musicians are given scores with modules from 2-36 bars in length, but the conductor is free to choose which modules are played next. Combining improvisational aspects with open form composition, the conductor uses the orchestra as an instrument, while each performer shapes the music through virtuosic improvisation and the individual stylization of musical performance.
 
The music focuses on polyrhythmic/polymetric structures, by playing several meters at once, or adding lines of rhythms on top of each other. Soloists experiment with all kinds of sounds, or microployphonic structures, wherein a layer of sound is created through carefully crafted small events. The music reminds us of Miles Davis's Bitches Brew period or of Steve Coleman, juxtaposed with Györgyi Ligeti's micropolyphonic works or Steve Reich's phase pieces.
 
With Mari Kimura (violin,) Mark Feldman (violin,) Stephanie Griffin (viola,) Tomas Ullrich (cello,) Briggan Kraus (alto sax, baritone sax,) Marty Ehrlich (bass clarinet, alto sax,) Robert Dick (flute, contrabass flute,) Detlef Landeck (tuba,) Dafna Naphtali (voice, live sound processing,) Ursel Schlicht (piano,) Deman Maroney (piano,) Stomu Takeishi (bass,) Satoshi Takeishi (percussion) and Hans Tammen (conduction/concept.)

Check out: http://www.tammen.org

Sylvie Courvoisier & Mark Feldman - Duo

Pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, known for her work with John Zorn, Ikue Mori, Yusef Lateef, Tim Berne & her own group, Abaton or Mephista, performs with violinist Mark Feldman for an evening of exciting improvisations and new compositions. Feldman has performed with John Zorn, John Abercrombie & Dave Douglas, among others, and is known for his entirely original and self-made approach to violin improvisation.

Courvoisier and Feldman have been performing together internationally since 1996, with regular appearances throughout the USA and Canada. They have toured widely in Europe, at such festivals as Willisau, Saalfelden, Mulhouse, Partheney, Shaffhouse, Muenster, Bath and Bordeaux.

Check out:

Mark Feldman <http://www.sylviecourvoisier.com/e/doc/form_co_leader_c.htm#>

Sylvie Courvoisier <http://www.sylviecourvoisier.com/e/doc/form_co_leader_c.htm#>

Joel Harrison - The Wheel (2004/5)
5 Movements for Double Quartet and Guitar

Joel Harrison: composer, guitarist
First violin: Mark Feldman
Second violin: Christian Howes
Viola: Caleb Burhans
Cello: Wendy Sutter
Alto saxophone: David Binney
Trumpet: Ralph Alessi
Bass: Lindsey Horner
Drums: Dan Weiss

The impulse for this piece came from a longstanding determination to make music that equally represents improvisation and notation. When Jazz gets tiresome (too much soloing and predictable textures and form), and classical music gets stodgy and monolithic, I tend to dream up pieces that try to incorporate my favorite aspects of both. One of the reasons we love Duke Ellington is that he found a way to make Jazz that had a huge amount of written material to back up and enhance the
improvising. It’s a difficult task- the writing can overwhelm the joy of spontaneity, and conversely the solos can sound tacked on and useless. Furthermore, it is very hard to find players who are skilled
enough, or even willing, to straddle both worlds. Only 20 years ago this piece would have been practically inconceivable. It is only relatively recently, for instance, that classically trained string
players have developed a serious capacity to improvise and “rock out.” Particular challenges involve the balance of the instruments, blending the drums with the strings, and creating lines that sit well on both the horns and the strings.

Two classic ensembles from their respective worlds, then- string quartet and jazz quartet. Rather than writing jazz music and then throwing on some strings like icing on a cake, I decided to start by
writing string quartet music with Appalachian, African, and modern classical sensibilities. The improvisation stems from a bedrock of notation, and comes in a variety of forms, from more typical solos over changes, to duo improvising, to free ensemble ‘blowing.” Hopefully there are seamless transitions between the soul and spontaneity of improvising and the structure of written notes, resulting in a kind of music that truly IS both worlds, and does not just borrow from them. Check out: http://www.joelharrison.com

Jim Staley, Ikue Mori & John Zorn

Playing together for twenty-six years, and still not out of breath…
 
Roulette rounds up its fall season with a night of stellar ear-bending, mind-altering and earth-shattering improvisations by a trio of downtown’s most innovative and invigorating musicians/creators. With their individual work and as a trio, Staley, Zorn and Mori have been challenging and reinventing our ideas about music for over a quarter-century … and tonight should be no different. Each of these three boasts a virtuosic musicianship, a true vision and a tireless commitment to furthering the most far a-field forays into the improvised and experimental music traditions. Staley (trombone,) Zorn (sax) and Mori (percussion/electronics/visuals) are tried-and-true, award winning, effortlessly impressive and, most importantly, endlessly adventurous.