The Roulette Tapes

Yasunao Tone (1935-2025) was a composer, sound artist, technology disrupter, theorist, and author who was a participant in the 1960s Japanese Fluxus movement, and an early influential innovator in noise and glitch music, conceptual art, chance operations, and computer-assisted composition. His work utilized optics, sensors, interactivity, and techno-abuse, most notably his technique of scratching the surface of compact disks in order to confuse the laser reader causing it to randomly select fragments of sound. He later transitioned to corrupting digital audio files using his own algorithms and software. He moved from Tokyo to New York City in 1972. This program includes performances by the artist at Roulette ranging from 1989 to 2022 tracing the evolution of his practice.

DoYeon Kim is known for her expansive and pioneering performances and compositions and for introducing the gayageum, an ancient Korean zither, into contemporary music. Trained extensively in jazz and improvisation as well as in the canon of classical Korean music including sanjo, jeongak, and modern gugak, DoYeon channels history, literature, and an ever-evolving sense of the human spirit. Here, with artist commentary, in performances at Roulette from 2023-24 with musicians Satoshi Takeishi, Tomas Fujiwara, Brandon Lopez, Yuma Uesaka, David Leon, Laura Cocks, Henry Fraser, Tyshawn Sorey, Peter Evans, Sam Minaie, Matt Maneri.