Roulette to Welcome Rinde Eckert and Ned Rothenberg for FIVE BEASTS, 5/31

Roulette presents "Five Beasts" a collaboration between Grammy Award winning performance artist Rinde Eckert and highly acclaimed musician Ned Rothenberg. "Five Beasts" is a set of human portraits of men and women seen as if by an animal, the language a kind of music or noise, the gestures unaccountable. We are, most of us, lost in a forest of our own design, a welter of unconscious narratives, the pull of our complicated past, an obsessive constructor of futures, howling our troubled allegory of self: this is ourmasquerade-cum-delusion. But the animal informs and teaches us - if we listen. We are absurd and amazed, and sometimes beautiful, in our utter ignorance.

Performance artist/vocalist Rinde Eckert and composer/performer Ned Rothenberg first worked together over 20 years ago in a production of Power Failure by the Paul Dresher Ensemble and have fantasized about a future collaboration ever since. In October 2012, the chance came at the Walls and Bridges festival, presented at Roulette by Lyon's Villa Gillet. The response to their Five Beasts was overwhelming, prompting Roulette director Jim Staley to invite Eckert and Rothenberg to expand the piece into an evening length work. Ned and Rinde are joined by beatbox artist Adam Matta in this new version.

Rinde Eckert is a writer, composer, singer, actor, and director whose music, music theater, and dance theater pieces have been performed throughout the United States and abroad. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Music Composition, a Marc Blitzstein Award (from The American Academy of Arts and Letters), an Obie Award (And God Created Great Whales), a Grammy Award (Lonely Motel - Music from Slide), an Alpert Award (2009), and a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award (2012). He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 2007 for Orpheus X.

Composer/Performer Ned Rothenberg has been internationally acclaimed for both his solo and ensemble music, presented for the past 30 years in North and South America, Europe and Asia. He performs primarily on the alto saxophone, clarinet , bass clarinet, and the shakuhachi - an endblown Japanese bamboo flute. He leads the trio Sync, with Jerome Harris, guitars and Samir Chatterjee, tabla. Recent recordings include Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, Ryu Nashi (new music for shakuhachi), Inner Diaspora, The Lumina Recordings andGhost Stories, all on John Zorn's acclaimed Tzadik label, as well as Live at Roulette with Evan Parker, Are You Be and The Fell Clutch, on Rothenberg's own label.

Rinde Eckart & Ned Rothenberg in "Five Beasts" will perform on Friday, May 31, 8pm at Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR. Cost: $15/10. For more information, visit www.roulette.org or call 917.267.0368. Follow the link to learn more about the event.

Roulette - one of New York City's premiere venues for experimental music for over 33 years - has reopened bigger and better than ever. Located in a newly renovated 1920s Art Deco concert hall in Downtown Brooklyn, the new Roulette features two levels of seating for up to 400 people (600 standing), an expanded multi-channel sound system, projection screen for film and multi-media events, state-of-the-art lighting system, modular stage, and a specially designed floor to accommodate dance. Teamed with bold new programming, the new Roulette promises to be one of the most exciting places in New York City - if not the country - to experience adventurous music and art.