Interpretations:

Myra Melford & Henry Threadgill

Myra Melford Quartet: Happy Whistlings

Myra Melford is a composer-performer with a “commitment to refreshing, often surprising uses of melody, harmony and ensemble playing”. For this evening, Ms. Melford will present a collage of new compositions and improvisations inspired by the writing of Uruaguayan journalist and author Eduardo Galeano. In his book “Genesis,” from the “Memory of Fire,” trilogy, he examines the vastly encompassing interpretation of the history of the Americas and the New World. Myra Melford, piano; Matana Roberts, saxophone; Mary Halvorson, guitar; and Harris Eisenstadt, percussion.

Henry Threadgill’s Zooid + Talujon Percussion: Fate Cues

At the forefront of music for the past quarter of a century, Henry Threadgill incorporates his experiences with jazz, gospel, blues and marching bands freely in a mix with various types of world music. He views these folios as evolutionary and uses the past as a basis, rather than an ingredient, of their music. Fate Cues is both notated and improvised, written specifically for the collective ensembles. This piece is an exploration of how disparate elements can work together towards a larger dynamic for a source of inspiration. Zooid: Henry Threadgill, saxophone and flute; Stomu Takeishi, bass guitar; Liberty Ellman, acoustic guitar; Jose Davila, tuba; Elliot Kavee, drums. Talujon Percussion: David Cossin, Dominic Donato, Michael Lipsey, Matt Ward.

Commissioned by Talujon with funds provided by the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust

Trio Chroch, DK and poet Richard J. Rizzi, USA

Trio Chroch play spontaneous music in a way that's warm, honest, friendly and turned towards the audience. New music performed with excellence in an ongoing dialog with the spectators and the surrounding environment. The music is innovative and imaginative.

Trio Chroch is committed to guide the listeners on a voyage through colourful collages of sounds, and join them on a journey where boundaries will collapse and new musical landscapes will unfold.

Trio Chroch has among other places performed at: Copenhagen Jazz Festival, Aarhus Jazz Festival, Av – Art Festivals, Magic Music Festival, Kolding Kontempoary Festival, Live on Danish National Radio.Trio Chroch has toured US four times and performed at venues like "Knitting Factory" and "Roulette" in NYC. Apart from the US tours Trio Chroch had the opportunity to tour in Canada, Germany, Latvia, Estonia and Sweden.

We are the Creative Opportunity Orchestra, a ten member composers forum for new jazz music. This concert features a new commission from one of our core composers, Bob Rodriguez from the Chamber Music America/Doris Duke New Works Program. The program will include works from other member composers including Tina Marsh (a 2004 CMA/DD recipient), John Mills, Alex Coke, Brian Allen with additional ensemble players Dennis Dotson, Ron Horton, Curtis Fowlkes, and more.

“CO2 is a killer band ... great, wise recordings stomping into disparate passions, touching on Ellington, Sun Ra, Stravinsky in tandem with CO2’s sweeping Big Band sound.” THE SEATTLE WEEKLY“This uncompromising ensemble features Marsh's vocals and she evidently can sing just about anything she can think of. Over the course of 2 sets and dead-on intonation, she recited texts, added wordless vocal lines to the mix, whispered, murmured, and at times seemed to be receiving alien transmissions. It's risky, out-on-a-limb vocalizing ... but there's something innately appealing about her approach ... The charts are creative and stimulating, and with the band at the end of their brief tour, they were at a real peak of dynamic interplay. Definitely a group deserving of much wider recognition." CADENCE Magazine

Among the many pioneers on the Austin music scene, the Creative Opportunity Orchestra (CO2) stands as one of the boldest and certainly the jazziest. Beginning in 1980, CO2 dared to cross the unknown frontiers of avant-garde jazz and improvisational music. Led by Texas Hall of Fame vocalist Tina Marsh, whose singing has been called “scat to the highest power,” CO2 set out to break free of the pressures of commercial nightclub performance and explore composition and improvisation possibilities in a large-group format. With innovative compositions, laced with free-form inventions and the unique vocalizations of Marsh, CO2 has accelerated the genre into the modern age with an avant-garde jazz sound mixed with a world music sensibility. Originally consisting of 20 members, the orchestra has involved more than 200 musicians over its 26 years, including guest artists such as Roscoe Mitchell, Carla Bley, Steve Swallow, Billy Hart, and Kenny Wheeler. CO2 has established a position as a respected musical organization in Austin (Artistic Director Tina Marsh was inducted into the Texas Music Hall of Fame in 2001), and has also garnered much national and international acclaim. From 2002-2008 CO2 has produced its annual NEW JAZZ Series, which highlights local jazz musicians as well as featuring national artists, including Hamiet Bluiett, Fred Hess, Ron Miles, Sue Mingus, Boris Koslov, Kidd Jordan, Alvin Fielder and others. CO2 has numerous recordings, including the most recent release MIGRATION, available with other CD's at the website www.creop.org

Interpretations: TED MOOK performs Daniel Rothman & Edward Simms

Pansonority/Luminance: Music of Ezra Sims & Daniel Rothman
Ezra Sims, one of the pioneers in the field of microtonal composition, celebrates his 80th birthday with a special performance of two masterful pieces String Quartet #5 and Clarinet Quintet. Composer Daniel Rothman presents his String Quartet and a work especially written for Ted Mook. Sean Carney, violin; Christian Hebel, violin; Liuh Wen Ting, viola; Ted Mook, cello; Gilad Harel, clarinet.

Chris Forsyth

Guitarist/composer Chris Forsyth has carved a varied niche in the contemporary music scene with projects ranging from avant-rock to electro-acoustic experimentation to unclassifiable folk/noise/drone hybrids. He is an active collaborator across many media, and is a founding member of the iconoclastic group Peeesseye, who have been referred to as "the most remarkable smorgasbord of back porch minimalism, sound poetry and urban decay of recent memory" (Eric
Weddle, Signal to Noise). Their unique combination of warped rock architecture, free jazz horror, intergalactic glossolalia and stripped down abstract expressionism has been presented on over 145 concerts in North America and Europe and documented on 6 CDs since their formation
in 2002. More recently, Forsyth has begun branching out in a solo direction, composing and performing on 12-string acoustic guitar, resulting in his first solo CD "Live Journal at the Mice Machine VIP Dance Floor," released in September 2008 on the Incunabulum label.
Currently Forsyth is performing expansive electric versions of this solo material with a trio creatively dubbed The Chris Forsyth, which includes drummer Ryan Sawyer (Tall Firs, Stars Like Fleas, Charles Gayle Trio, etc) and bassist Peter Kerlin (The Sumerians, Minetta). "Blue Liz," his collaboration with choreographer RoseAnne Spradlin will premiere at the Kitchen October 23-25, 2008.

Alex Temple
presents new works for solo voice, keyboards and electronics:

"The Travels of E.C. Dumonde" -- Experimental radio theater exploring American mythology - a story about a woman finding strange things in small towns out West.
"This Changes Everything!" -- Combines New Wave, prog-rock, industrial, Baroque counterpoint, Minimalism and microtonal drone music. "hyperrealist video game music"
"Nobody Cares About Your Dreams But You" -- Explores the uneasy boundary between music and speech.

Alex Temple was born in Northampton, MA in 1983. A devotee of both scored music and various forms of popular music, he is resolutely opposed to stylistic hierarchies; in his own music, he seeks to bring together elements from various musical idioms, often to uncomfortable or disquieting effect. Recently, he has started looking for inspiration in other art forms, particularly in the films of David
Lynch. Temple received his BA from Yale University in 2005 and his MA from the University of Michigan in 2007; his teachers have included John Heiss, Matthew Suttor, Kathryn Alexander, Robert X. Rodriguez and Erik Santos. His music has been performed at venues including
Roulette, the Tenri Cultural Institute, the Tank, Piano's, the Crane Ars Center, An Die Musik, Electronic Music Midwest, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, and the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. He has received several awards, including Yale's Beekman Cannon Friends of Music Prize, two ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards and a BMI Student Composer Award. Temple has worked extensively with electronics and electric instruments, and has released two albums of his electronic music on his own label, Electric Walrus Records. He has also worked with dance and film, and played keyboards in an experimental bossa nova band. He is currently living in New York City, working for the New York Youth Symphony and putting on concerts of both chamber and electronic music.

Roulette Children's Concert:

Michael Evans

Michael Evans is an improvising drummer / percussionist / multi-instrumentalist / composer whose work investigates and embraces the collision of sound and theatrics, combining ordered systems with intuitive choices of sound making using found objects, homemade instruments, and various digital and homemade analog electronics.

http://www.michaelevanssounds.com

Adam Rudolph: GO Organic Orchestra

Composer Adam Rudolph returns this fall with another concert series for Go: Organic Orchestra.
In concert he will conduct between 20 - 35 musicians in a spontaneous way, using a newly created score of music/letter grids, language themes, tone rows, traditional and synthetic scales, diadic and intervalic harmonies, The compositions will also utilize Rudolph's rhythm concept of "Cyclic
Verticalism" to generate form and weave what he calls an "audio syncretic music fabric". The music is "organic" in the sense that the compositions and conducting exist as an inspiration and context for the musicians to express themselves by using their instruments as an amplifier for their inner voice.

I was fortunate to have attended two nights with Adam Rudolph's Go Organic Orchestra at Roulette a few months back and was blown away by Adam's distinctive blend of jazz and world music as well as his conducting." - Bruce Lee Gallanter - Downtown Music Gallery

" I caught a performance Go: Organic Orchestra down in SoHo last spring and was swept away by what they were doing. It was fascinating and ahead of its time, in the best possible way. I loved every minute of it. " - Marc Meyer, jazzwax.com

MEPHISTA: Sylvie Courvoisier, Ikue Mori & Susie Ibarra

Roulette Benefit: all tickets $20

Three of downtown's most dynamic performers join forces to form Mephista-one of the first all women supergroups (Susie Ibarra, Sylvie Courvoisier, and Ikue Mori). Separately these three have worked with some of the most important musicians in new music (Derek Bailey, William Parker, John Zorn, Fred Frith, Mike Patton, Dave Douglas, etc.)-together they have created a whole new kind of music spanning the worlds of rock, classical, jazz and electronica. Sensitive, powerfuland exotic.

Susie Ibarra, percussionist and composer of experimental and avant garde music is currently living in New York City. She received a music diploma from Mannes College of Music and B.A. from Goddard College. Susie Ibarra studied percussion with Daniel Druckman, Filipine Kulintang with Danongan Kalanduyan and drum set with Buster Smith, Vernel Fournier and Milford Graves. As a percussionist, she has performed Filipine Kulintang gong music, southeast asian gong music, jazz and avant jazz with various ensembles, improvised music with the NY downtown scene and solo work. She can be heard on various recordings performing with John Zorn, Pauline Oliveros, Derek Bailey, William Parker, Dave Douglas, John Lindberg, and Wadada Leo Smith. Susie Ibarra currently performs with her trio, Susie Ibarra Trio with Jennifer Choi & Craig Taborn, Mark Dresser & Susie Ibarra Duo , Mundo Ninos with Roberto Rodriguez , and Electric Kulintang with Craig Taborn,Trevor Dunn & Roberto Rodriguez

Sylvie Courvoisier was born and raised in Lausanne, Switzerland. As a composer, she has been commissioned to write music for concerts, radio, dance and theater. Her newest release as a leader "ABATON" with Mark Feldman and Erik Friedlander is on ECM Records. As a pianist and improviser, she plays and records with different artists such as Mark Feldman, John Zorn, Tony Oxley, Yusef Lateef, Butch Morris, Tim Berne, Herb Robertson, Joëlle Léandre, Dave Douglas, Ellery Eskelin, Ikue Mori, Fred Frith, Michel Godard, Mark Nauseef… Since 1998, Sylvie Courvoisier has been based in Brooklyn, New York. Her recent work includes: "Abaton", a trio performing her compositions with Mark Feldman violin & Erik Friedlander cello, "Sylvie Courvoisier Quintet", Vincent Courtois, Gerald Cleaver, "Duo" with Mark Feldman playing John Zorn’s music "Vincent Courtois Trio" the French cellist's group with Ellery Eskelin saxophone. "John Zorn's Cobra", “Yusef Lateef 4tet”, Adam Rudolph and Joseph Bowie, "Herb Robertson Quintet", Tom Rainey and Mark Dresser, Various Duo and Solo Concerts.

Ikue Mori moved from her native city of Tokyo to New York in 1977, started playing drums and soon formed the seminal NO WAVE band DNA, with fellow noise pioneers Arto Lindsay and Tim Wright. DNA enjoyed legendary cult status, while creating a new brand of radical rhythms and dissonant sounds; forever altering the face of rock music. In the mid 80’s Ikue started in employ drum machines in the unlikely context of improvised music. While limited to the standard technology provided by the drum machine, she has never the less forged her own highly sensitive signature style. Through out in 90’s She has subsequently collaborated with numerous improvisors throughout the US, Europe, and Asia, while continuing to produce and record her own music. 1998, She was invited to perform with Ensemble Modern as the soloist along with Zeena Parkins, and composer Fred Frith. Ikue won the Distinctive Award for Prix Ars Electronics Digital Music category in 99. In 2000 Ikue started using the laptop computer to expand on her already signature sound, thus broadening her scope of musical expression. Current working groups include a quartet with Kim Gordon, DJ Olive and Jim O’Rourke, duo project with Zeena Parkins, Trio with Haco and Aki Onda and Hemophiliac with John Zorn and Mike Patton.

Jen Stock

w/ guest Geremy Schulick, guitar

City Scars and Grainary : live audiovisual pieces that correlate images of the landscape with ambient granular soundscapes and found sounds.

Jennifer Stock is a composer and sound artist who combines sound and image for live performance. Current projects include "City Scars," and "Granary," which use audiovisual laptop performance to correlate video with granular soundscapes and found sounds. Recent performances include the New Composers Series at White Box Gallery in Chelsea, the EMF Lab Productions Concert Series at Flea Theater, the Untapped series at the Tank, and the New West Electronic Arts Organization Festival at Roulette, as well as sets at Galapagos, the Chelsea Art Museum, the Knitting Factory, Yippie Museum Cafe, Monkeytown, and the Lit Lounge. She also curated a year-long concert series called Sound Art; these "audible adventures" (Steve Smith, Time Out) culminated in a six-hour concert in Washington Square Park that presented a cross section of contemporary experimental music to a broader public. She holds a B.A. in Music and English from Yale and is currently pursuing a PhD in music composition at CUNY. For info: http://www.soundbookone.com.

Lainie Fefferman

with Matt Welch (bagpipes), Dither (Simon Kafka, Taylor Levine, Josh Lopes, James Moore), Anne Hege (voice), Sarah Paden (voice), Sara Phillips Budde (clarinet), James Moore (banjo), and Missy Mazzoli (melodica).

Tonight composer and multimedia artist, Lainie Fefferman presents Tekiah - the worlds first bagpipe and electronics piece inspired by the jewish liturgy, Tongue of Thorns - an homage to the Velvet Underground and 16th century counterpoint for electric guitar quartet performed by Dither, Celestial Mechanics - "using the vibrations of the female body to evoke the movement of celestial phenomena" for women's vocal trio, and new songs for her post-minimalist folk funk ensemble, Phthia.

As a composer and multimedia artist, Lainie Fefferman crosses stylistic boundaries and defies conventional genre classification. Her music draws from a wide range of influences: classical and folk, western and non-western, spiritual and zany. She has worked with visual artists, filmmakers, choreographers, and all styles of musical performers. Her past, present and future collaborators include: pianist Michael Mizrahi, electric guitar quartet Dither, So Percussion, the New York Virtuoso Singers, and the Yale Collegium Musicum. Her recent performance projects include avant-garde vocal trio Celestial Mechanics and post-minimalist folk funk band Phthia. She got her B.A. from Yale in both Music and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (focusing largely on the chant traditions of Judaism and Islam) and is currently enjoying the pursuit of a PhD from Princeton in composition. As a side career, she has enjoyed rich success with her soulful kazoo playing, including a performance of Louis Andriessen’s “Worker’s Union” with the Bang on a Can All-Stars. She has participated in workshops including: the Sentieri Selvaggi composer workshop in Milan (with Julia Wolfe), the Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble Workshop in New York City, the Bang on a Can Summer Residency in North Adams, Massachusetts, and the Summer Arabic Music Retreat with Simon Shaheen at Mount Holyoke College.

Deep Listening Band

"Our work aims to explore new listening strategies, unusual acoustic environments, expanded instrument technologies and new relationships with audiences."

Deep Listening Band is an improvisational group which was founded in 1988 by Pauline Oliveros (accordion), David Gamper (keyboards), and Stuart Dempster (trombone, didjeridu). The group is a collaborative exploration of sound and of social interaction between musicians and others.

Recent collaborators have been Thomas Buckner (voice), Ellen Fullman (Long String Instrument), Joe Giardullo (saxophone), Fritz Hauser (percussion), Urs Leimgruber (saxophone), Julie Lyon Balliett (voice and invisible dancing), and Joe McPhee (saxophone). The Deep Listening Band actively tours, at times performing in unique environmental settings.

Zeena Parkins: right after

2 EVENINGS!

Generously Commissioned by Roulette with Funds from Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust

A dense array of crisp contours, sophisticated color studies and deskilled gestural marks, tonight Zeena Parkins presents a collection of pieces for four loudspeakers and large ensemble, including:
Christine Bard, Anthony Coleman, Erin Cornell, Miguel Frasconi, Christopher Mcintyre, Loren Parkins, Jim Pugliese, Josh Quillein, Ned Rothenberg, Jane Rigler, Jim Staley.

ZEENA PARKINS, composer/improviser/sound artist, well known as a pioneer of the electric harp, has also extended the la nguage of the acoustic harp. Zeena makes scores for film, video, theater and dance. She is especially interested in exploring unpredictable orchestrations, live processing of acoustic instruments and installations combining multiple speakers with live players. Collaborators include Ikue Mori, Fred Frith, Elliott Sharp, Bjork, Matmos, Kim Gordon, Yoko Ono, Christian Marclay, Nels Cline, filmmakers Cynthia Madansky, Jennifer Reeves, Daria Martin, Mandy McIntosh and choreographers John Japserse, DD Dorvillier, Jennifer Monson, Neil Greenberg, Jennifer Lacey and Emmanuelle Vo-Dinh.

Adam Rudolph: GO Organic Orchestra

see Monday, October 20th for details

Anthony Coleman: Confronting The Current Paradigm

Anthony Coleman - composer/pianist
Jennifer Choi, Cornelius Dufallo - violins
Stephanie Griffin - viola
Alex Waterman - cello
Marty Ehrlich - bass clarinet
Doug Wieselman - reeds and guitar
Michael Attias, Ashley Paul - reeds
Stephen Gosling - piano
Eli Keszler, Dave Shively - Percussion

Something happened and a lot of new work came out of it. Please come and find out what. Tonight's program includes Artifacts for String Quartet, Flat Narrative for Bass Clarinet and Piano Quartet, Six Short Pieces For Piano, the Band Project ...it was in a Hotel...and More!

Anthony Coleman is a composer-keyboardist who has performed and recorded throughout the world. His projects include the piano trio Sephardic Tinge, which has released three discs (all Tzadik) and has performed at the Sarajevo Jazz Festival (with support from Arts International), North Sea Jazz Festival, Saalfelden Festival, and the Krakow and Vienna Jewish Culture Festivals. His Selfhaters Orchestra has issued two CDs also both on Tzadik. His compositions for other ensembles include Latvian Counter-Gambit for chamber orchestra, commissioned by the Crosstown Ensemble, Mise en Abime, commissioned by the Bang On A Can All-Stars/Jerome Foundation, Goodbye and Good Luck, commissioned by Neta Pulvermacher and Dancers/Meet The Composer, as well as commissions from Relche, Aspen Woodwind Quintet, and David Krakauer/Concert Artists Guild. Coleman's compositions can also be heard on the following CDs: Carol Emanuel's Tops of Trees (Koch); Guy Klucevsek's Manhattan Cascade (CRI); A Guide For The Perplexed (Knitting Factory Works); A Conspiracy of Dances (Einstein); and Polka From the Fringe (Wave/Eva). Coleman's other major projects have included by Night, a series of pieces based on experiences in the ex-Yugoslavia (Disco by Night [Avant]) and the duo Lobster and Friend, with saxophonist Roy Nathanson (The Coming Great Millennium, Lobster and Friend [both Knitting Factory Works] and I Could've Been A Drum [Tzadik]). He has also produced several recordings for other artists, including Marc Ribot, Basya Schecter and Pharoah's Daughter, Romanian singer Sanda, as well as the acclaimed With Every Breath - the Music of Shabbat at BJ [Knitting Factory Works]. Anthony Coleman has received grants and residencies from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Djerassi Colony, the Civitella Ranieri Center, the Frei und Hansestadt Hamburg Kulturbehrde and the Yellow Springs Arts Center. In the last year, Coleman has been the subject of a three-day festival, Abstract Adventures, in Brussels, Belgium. He presented a concert of his music as part of the Interpretations series at Merkin Concert Hall, NYC. He has degrees in composition from the New England Conservatory of Music and the Yale School of Music and attended Mauricio Kagel's seminar at Centre Acanthes in Aix-en-Provence, France.

Jeffrey Schanzer w/ Billy Bang (violin), Ned Rothenberg (woodwinds), Lindsey Horner (bass), Warren Smith (percussion) AND a Special Guest!

Jeffrey Schanzer is a composer and guitarist involved in a wide variety of music, ranging from fully notated to fully improvised. He has studied composition with Morton Feldman and Anthony Davis and guitar with Oswald Rantucci. No More In Thrall, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, where his father was a prisoner, performed by the Sirius String Quartet with percussionist Kevin Norton, was released on the CRI label in 1997. Jeffrey performs with his wife, composer/pianist Bernadette Speach, in Schanzer/Speach Duo, and leads the Jeffrey Schanzer Ensemble. Within the context of the Duo and his Ensemble, Jeffrey has worked with such musicians as Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Oliver Lake, Leroy Jenkins, Bobby Previte, Ned Rothenberg and Wadada Leo Smith.

The composer/guitarist reunites the Jeffrey Schanzer Ensemble for the first time in over a decade to perform Leroy Jenkins’ Bluejay on the Firescape along with other old favorites. Featuring: Billy Bang- violin, Ned Rothenberg - woodwinds, Lindsey Horner - bass and Warren Smith- percussion. Then he performs with baj, a cooperative improvisation trio with flutist Andrea LaRose and pianist Bernadette Speach, which will feature new soundtracks to recent recorded commentaries by death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.