"The Man Who Made Roulette Into New York’s Music Lab"
The New York Times
Sunday, May 19, 2024
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New in The New York Times Sunday Arts & Leisure section: my exit interview with the great trombonist and composer Jim Staley, who co-founded the essential new-music institution Roulette in 1978, and replanted it in his NYC loft in 1980, as he prepares to step away from leadership in June after 45 years.
From my first visit to Roulette in 1993 – the first time I saw Derek Bailey perform in person, a literally life-changing experience – to my latest encounters there with Du Yun’s OK Miss and Robert Ashley’s opera Foreign Experiences, this has been a venue special and dear to me. When I interviewed Zeena Parkins and Ikue Mori about their new Phantom Orchard project in 2004 for my sole cover story for The Wire, the interview took place at the original loft.
I know that I’m far from alone in feeling this way.
I’m very grateful to Jim for sharing his thoughts about what’s happened and what’s to come—obviously what’s in the Q&A is only the tip of the iceberg. My thanks, too, to Zeena, Matt Mehlan, Jamie Burns, Joanna Mattrey, and the incredibly generous David Weinstein for crucial insights, and to Rachel Saltz and Emily Brennan at The New York Times for a smooth and illuminating edit.
You can help to send Jim off in style at this year’s Roulette Gala on Thursday, June 6, featuring a suitably dazzling constellation of artists: Zeena and Ikue, Henry Threadgill, Yuka Honda and Nels Cline, Immanuel Wilkins and Joel Ross, Holland Andrews and yuniya edi kwon, and John Zorn with Staley himself. You’ll find all the details here.
Until then, since I couldn’t use a lot of what I was provided in interviews, I plan to share exclusive outtakes in my Night After Night newsletter during the weeks to come.
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