Audrey Chen - Glacial

Audrey Chen will be performing a series of improvisations utilizing her voice, cello and analog electronics. The consequences will run the gamut between conflagration and the tenderness of a shared space of warmth, like eskimos retreated into their igloo for the night, burning oil and experiencing the co-mingled heat of their bodies and breath...

Audrey Chen is a Chinese-American musician and performance artist born outside of Chicago in 1976. Using the cello, voice and analog electronics, Chen's work focuses on the combination and layering of traditional and extended techniques. A large component of her music is improvised and her approach to this is often extremely personal and visceral. Her performance work incorporates sound, movement and visual/sculptural concepts. Chen performs solo and in collaboration with a wide number of musicians and dancers. Some current projects include: duos with Phil Minton, Frederic Blondy, Robert van Heumen, Katt Hernandez, Nate Wooley, id m theft able, a new trio project with Nate Wooley and C. Spencer Yeh, 3AandE: with Seamus Cater, Robert van Heumen and Nate Wooley and Trockeneis: with Andy Hayleck, Dan Breen, Catherine Pancake and Paul Neidhardt. Chen has performed in Europe, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Taiwan and the USA. She is currently based in Baltimore, MD USA where she is member of the Red room and High Zero Collective, an on-going series and international festival devoted to experimental improvised music.
www.myspace.com/audreychen
www.redroom.org
www.highzero.org

Duane Pitre "Ensemble Drones"

Duane Pitre (originally from New Orleans) is a Brooklyn-based, avant-garde composer, performer, and improviser. His current works explore both chaos and discipline—and the relationship that exists between the two.

Ensemble Drones is a rule-based, long-tone composition by Duane Pitre. The work’s score calls for 12 or more performers from the Strings, Winds, and Brass categories along with bowed electric guitar (played by the composer) and harmonium. The composition requires its performers to make minor decisions based on its score -- which provides a structure consisting of set playing methods, technique restrictions, a fixed tonic, fixed pitch classes, and spontaneous conduction -- resulting in slow-shifting permutations of a single chord over a long duration. Essentially, the score enables all the performers to approach this planned improvisation in the same manner, thus creating a group of musicians that thinks and plays as a cohesive unit. The result is a piece of music that is focused, yet fluid, minimal, yet dense -- yielding a sound that is not unlike slow-motion chamber music. The composition is an exercise in discipline and freedom, in the refinement of music, and in communal focus. The piece involves a temporary community of musicians with a central goal stripped of self: to become one.

Pitre’s December 4th performance of Ensemble Drones at Roulette will feature a special ensemble consisting of 20+ performers that will partially encompass the audience.

H*E*R: Yvette Perez, Danny Tunick, Peter Zummo w/ special guest Darius Jones

H*E*R blends minimalism, jazz, and pop influences in delicate, mysterious, and sophisticated tunes about memory and the outer world that blur the line between improv and song; between prismatic recollection and blighted reality. The trio is led by the Carla Bley of avant-pop music vocalist/keyboardist Yvette Perez whose sensuously sparse soundscapes are reminiscent of Annette Peacock and Laurie Anderson. Legendary trombonist/composer Peter Zummo contributes some of his compositions and crafts masterful melodies and improvisations. Vibraphone and percussion player Danny Tunick adds distinctive textures and floating rhythms. The group performs this evening with alto-saxophonist Darius Jones as special guest.

"'songs about the mysteries of housework and nature'... forwards certain ideas about stillness, motion, and beauty" -- time out new york

www.myspace.com/persiancardinal
www.myspace.com/yvyvette
www.myspace.com/peterzummo

Andrew Drury CHILDRENS CONCERT

Metal dust pan, aluminum sheets, bronze gear, faucet sleeve, shish kabob skewers, plastic chopsticks. By bowing, scraping, circular breathing, and sometimes hitting objects such as these, and many others, Andrew Drury will give a solo floor tom performance that revels in the hidden voices of the drum and pushes young peoples' imaginations beyond the limit. There will be Q&A and audience participation.

Drummer/composer Andrew Drury works mainly in jazz and free improvisation, with regular forays into new music, pop, and other genres and media. The former student of Ed Blackwell has performed in Europe and North America and can be heard on over 20 CDs--including "Renditions: Solos 2004-2007" (Creative Sources) and the upcoming trio CD (recorded live at Roulette) "my fingers will be your tears" featuring Myra Melford and Briggan Krauss. Drury has performed and recorded with Ricardo Arias, Michel Doneda, Peter Evans, Jason Kao Hwang's EDGE and Spontaneous River, Andrea Neumann, Rat Race Choir, Reuben Radding, Chris Speed, Steve Swell, TOTEM>, Nate Wooley, and Jack Wright, to name a few. Since 1989 he has led nearly 1,000 workshops in schools (pre-K to graduate), prisons, museums, Indian reservations, homeless shelters, and in remote villages in Guatemala and Nicaragua.

"The drums must be the oldest musical instrument of human kind, and no one has ever confronted it with a more unbounded, yet skilled, creativity than has Drury."
--David Yearsley, Counterpunch

Philip Glass
Jon Gibson
Shelley Hirsch
Zeena Parkins
films by Henry Hills

$25 ALL TICKETS

Join Roulette for this special Benefit concert with performances by an eclectic mix of some of the most important names in contemporary music and rarely seen in such intimate settings – Philip Glass, Jon Gibson, Shelley Hirsch, and Zeena Parkins, with films by Henry Hills. All tickets are $25.

www.philipglass.com
www.jongibson.net
www.shelleyhirsch.com
www.zeenaparkins.com
www.henryhills.com

Brooke Hamre Gillespie: The Holy Experiment

– Circle – Bowing – Remember – Light –

The Holy Experiment will be performing a fluid meditational piece in honor and prayer of the sacred lands and waters of the earth, for the earth changes that are currently happening, and the people who are currently experiencing the effects of these changes; a ‘new’ musical offering.

The Holy Experiment is the solo performance of Brooke Hamre Gillespie who currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. Born in Ely, Minnesota, she moved to Boston, MA in 1999 and then to New York in 2003. Weaving her voice through dream-like sound-scapes made of atmospheric combinations of acoustic/electric sounds from violin, bells, flutes, drums, electronics, and other instruments, she creates evolving, organic architectures of vibration, light, shadow, and movement. The listener is guided on an inner journey where the lines of audience and performer become obscured.

www.shinkoyo.com/theholyexperiment

www.myspace.com/theholyexperiment

Rozanne Levine & Chakra Tuning
w/ Mark Whitecage, Perry Robinson and Rosi Hertlein

In Chakra Tuning, Rozanne Levine brings her love of improvisational spontaneity and organic, subtly shifting sounds to the fore. Sonic conversations emerge and develop as the group explores textures, sonorities and space. The “hauntingly beautiful” music of Chakra Tuning weaves in and out of melodies, exploring rhythms, moods and inner space in a transforming, unfolding journey. Ms. Levine performs on alto clarinet, clarinet and bamboo flute, and her long-time band mate Mark Whitecage joins her on clarinet, soprano saxophone and electronics. Adding their totally original voices to Chakra Tuning are clarinetist Perry Robinson and violinist/vocalist Rosi Hertlein. Rozanne Levine’s compositions form the thematic material from which the musicians improvise. Electronic manipulation plays a part in the group sound, as do bird whistles, ocarinas, half horns and percussion. Chakra Tuning recorded their debut CD in January/April 2008 and plan to release it soon.

All the members of Chakra Tuning are acclaimed composers and bandleaders. Clarinetist/composer/improviser Rozanne Levine has worked with dancers, poets, actors, vocalists, and sound sculptors, in bands large and small, and with some of the most creative musicians on both coasts, including Anthony Braxton, William Parker, Jason Kao Hwang, Nick Mathis, The New Reed Quartet, The Bi-Coastal Orchestra, Robert (Mike) Mahaffay, and the Improvisors Collective Orchestra, among others. She was a founding member of William and Patricia Nicholson Parker’s Improvisors Collective, and performed on Whitecage’s sound sculptures in the Glass House Ensemble. She is also a noted photographer and received a commission grant from Philadelphia’s Painted Bride Art Center for both her music and photographs. Mark Whitecage is internationally known as an innovative instrumentalist and composer in the fields of jazz and new music. He has performed internationally and recorded with some of the leading artists of our time, including Jeanne Lee, Anthony Braxton, Jacques Coursil, The Nu Band, Lane / Grassi / Whitecage, Gunter Hampel, Mario Pavone, Joe McPhee, William Parker, Marshall Allen and Steve Swell. Perry Robinson is the sui generis master of the clarinet in jazz, folk and avant-garde music who has worked with everyone from Dave Brubeck and Bill Dixon to Pete Seeger, George Clinton, Badal Roy and Anthony Braxton; and Rosi Hertlein is a breathtaking improviser on both violin and voice who has performed and recorded with Cecil Taylor, Pauline Oliveros, Joe McPhee, Joe Giardullo, Ivo Perelman, Wendy Osserman Dance Company, and Howard Johnson, to name a few.

“a surprising and wonderful evening of music...In the past, groups of this size and style have tended towards explosive outbursts like a battery of cannons. This group can certainly explode and erupt...Still… words like bright, clever and meditative seem more apt for description. The...audience that gathered to witness this event...appeared completely entranced.”

http://www.erjn.it/mus/whitecage/projects.htm

http://www.erjn.it/gallery/levine.htm

INTERPRETATIONS: Thurman Barker’s Strike Force
Douglas R. Ewart & Inventions

AACM percussionist Thurman Barker leads his percussion quintet Strike Force for a set of fascinating new works.
Also a longtime AACM member, reedsman Douglas R. Ewart brings together his ensemble of New York and Midwest musicians, Inventions, to perform new works inspired by Mr. Ewart’s recent experiences in Haiti and the memory of trumpeter Lester Bowie.
Strike Force: Bryan Carrott, vibraphone; Eli Fountaine, marimba; Wilson Moorman, xylophone/timpani; Ray Mantilla, conga drums and percussion; Thurman Barker, drums.
Inventions: Dee Alexander, vocalist; Kamau Brathwaite, poet; George E. Lewis, trombone and electronics; Adegoke Steven Colson, piano; Reggie Nicholson, marimba and drums; Douglas R. Ewart, reeds, voice, and percussion.

Violinist Tom Chiu Meets Digital Media: New Works With Special Guests David First, Elise Kermani, and Michael Schumacher

A noted champion of new music, violinist Tom Chiu has performed over 100 premieres worldwide and has worked closely with composers such as Larry Austin, Annie Gosfield, Alvin Lucier, Somei Satoh, Elliott Sharp, and Joji Yuasa, among others. Equally adept in the compositional and improvisational worlds, he has also worked extensively with jazz greats David Chesky, Oliver Lake, Roscoe Mitchell, and Ornette Coleman, with whom he appeared at the Dancing In Your Head Festival at the Walker Arts Center in 2005. His discography includes recordings for the Cambria, Chesky, Cold Blue Music, Innova, Koch, Mode, Sombient, and Tzadik labels.

Chiu has developed numerous collaborations in mixed media, and has created abstract soundscapes with experimental balloonist Judy Dunaway, and electro-acoustic improvisations with guitarist and digital media artist David First. With visionary director Lee Breuer, a founding member of the avant theater troupe Mabou Mines, he has been featured violinist and music director for the acclaimed show Red Beads. He has also composed for, performed with, and premiered new works with many choreographers, including Shen Wei, Christopher Wheeldon, and Eun-Me Ahn.

With the FLUX Quartet, of which he is founder and first violinist, Chiu has appeared at festivals and music centers worldwide, including the Melbourne Festival, the Samuel Beckett Centenary in Dublin, and Carnegie Hall's When Morty Met John, curated by visionary sound-artist Joan La Barbara. Widely regarded as “one of the most fearless and important new-music ensembles around” (San Francisco Chronicle), the FLUX performed the monumental String Quartet No.2 by Morton Feldman (recording available on mode.com) during the opening season of Zankel Hall.

Amy X Neuburg

Amy X Neuburg – voice and live electronics

Old songs, new songs, and new approaches to old technologies

San Francisco-based avant-cabaret artist Amy X Neuburg performs a "one-woman musical hurricane" (Otago Times, NZ) of emotionally intense, meticulously crafted songs and stories accompanied by electronic percussion and layers of live vocal looping. In this concert Amy will perform favorites from her past and present repertoire as well as introduce works-in-development using her newest gadget the Blippoo Box -- a hand-built analog synthesizer created for her by instrument designer Rob Hordijk. Special guest Steve Espinola will join Amy for an experiment in live looping using 1940s archaic recording technology.

The oddly entertaining and often humorous ‘avant-cabaret’ songs of Amy X Neuburg combine her interests in poetry and theater, expressive use of music technology, and exploration of multiple genres using the many colors of her four-octave vocal range. She has performed at venues as diverse as the Other Minds and Bang on a Can Festivals, the Berlin International Poetry Festival, the Wellington and Christchurch Jazz Festivals (NZ), colleges, rock clubs and concert venues at home and abroad. As composer, her many commissions include works for chamber ensembles with and without live electronics (Robin Cox Ensemble, Present Music, Santa Cruz New Music Works, Solstice vocal ensemble, Christchurch Arts Centre chorus), as well as numerous works for theater, visual media, and modern dance. As vocalist Amy specializes in contemporary performance; she toured Europe and Japan with Robert Ashley’s operas, sang the leading role of Simone Weil in Guillermo Galindo’s “Decreation,” and played in a long-running musical with Culture Clash. Her current focus is her new ensemble The Cello ChiXtet, with whom she is now recording her song cycle The Secret Language of Subways for voice, three cellos and live electronics.

Steve Espinola (Brooklyn) has been a long-time member of NYC’s Anti-Folk community as a songwriter, singer and pianist. He is an obsessive collector and rejuvenator of discarded, rare and archaic music technologies as well as an instrument builder and healing-music practitioner

“(A) wonderful performer-composer... Her songs channel the rhythms of urban life through the seriocomic sensibility of a born entertainer… a delicate balance between sauciness and depth… Neuburg's musical inventiveness proves a delight throughout. -- Joshua Kosman, San Francisco Chronicle

“Neuburg is a new kind of multi-threat composer… a wonder of sampling, overdubbing, and electronic manipulation of live sound, a fabulous singer… exhilarating originality. Nobody else sounds like Amy X. Some of the most compelling music being made today.” -- Tom Strini, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Jim Staley & Joey Baron

Joey and I played for the first time together last February at the Stone.. we had such a great time, we just had to do it again!.. Hope you can make it...

Jim Staley, trombonist/composer moved to New York and 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. He is the 2005 recipient of the Susan E Kennedy Memorial Award, given for his years in support of  artists.

Joey Baron was born 1955 in Richmond ,Va. He started drumming at age 9, performing profesionally the following year. His early musical education included private drum lessons as well as the wide genre radio programing of the 1960s. After finishing high school early through a special accelerated program, Mr. Baron spent time in Boston attending the Berklee School of Music.He settled in Los Angeles,California in 1975 to realize a dream of playing with the great jazz musician Carmen McRae,consequently becoming a much sought after singer's drummer. Since moving to New York City in 1983, Mr. Baron has continued to expand his scope and develope his musical ideas through collaborations with various artists including Red Rodney, Bill Frisell, Tim Berne, Ron Carter, and John Zorn ,with whom the collaboration continues to the present.
Current projects include solo concert tours, duo concerts with Lee Konitz, Bill Frisell, his own band, "Killer Joey",The John Abercrombie Quartet, and the Schulkowsky,Studer,Baron drum trio.