On Thursday, September 26th, the Interpretations Series kicks off its 31st season. From September 2019 to May 2019, Interpretations will continue its tradition of playing host to composers, interpreters, and improvisers — artists of both local and international scale, with myriads of approaches to music. The season begins with sets from composer/performer Ben Neill, and composer/pianist Rocco Di Pietro. Held at Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn, NY, tickets are $20 for adults / $15 for students & seniors, and available on Roulette.org and Interpretations.info.

Rocco Di Pietro, a composer, pianist, author, and teacher whose music crosses multiple disciplinary boundaries, celebrates his 70th Birthday with a multi-decade curation of his works, including world premieres of Interrupted Dance (Piece for Rom) (2019), and String Quartet (Imaginal Listening) (2012-17). Other works include In Ringings (from Four Preludes, 1974), The Staircase and The Safe Harbor (from Two Pastels for Lukas Foss (In Memoriam), 2019), and Wave (from Acoustic Poems, 1972). The program will also feature a special performance of the late Julius Eastman’s Hail Mary from 1984, with Di Pietro on piano. (With Mivos Quartet, strings; Joseph Kubera, piano; Kathleen Supové, piano, recitation; Larry Marotta, guitar; and Robert Dick, flute.)

Also featured is the world premiere of Ben Neill’s Fantini Futuro: a new audio-visual performance work with interactive video projections, written for countertenor (Ryland Angel), Baroque keyboards (Gwendolyn Toth), and the mutantrumpet v4.0 (the debut of the newest rendition of Neill’s self-designed electro-acoustic instrument). The piece is based on the music and life of early Baroque trumpeter/composer Girolamo Fantini, who was responsible for bringing the trumpet indoors from the hunt and the battlefield to the realm of art music. The narrative depicts Fantini as a traveler through time and space, from the 17th century to the future, and reflects on the transformative power of current technology using the history of the trumpet as a metaphor. Fantini Futuro has been supported by the Nokia Bell Labs Experiments in Art and Technology program, and is a joint force with NYC early music ensemble ARTEK. (With Bob McGrath, director; Rachel Budin, lighting design; Liz Prince, costume design; Carl van Brunt, animation.)

ROCCO DI PIETRO (www.dipietroeditions.com) is a composer, pianist and writer born in Buffalo, New York in 1949. He studied music with Hans Hagen, Lukas Foss and Bruno Maderna at the Berkshire Music Center-Tanglewood where he was ASCAP Fellow and at The Darmstadt Summer courses in Germany. He has also been a MacDowell Fellow, Yaddo Fellow, Headlands Fellow, and an SICA-Composer in Residence at Stanford University. Di Pietro is currently an A.I.R. Teaching Artist in residence for the State of Ohio. His music has been played by many musicians throughout the world including: Robert Dick, Frances Marie Uitti, Kathleen Supové, Julius Eastman, Yvar Mikhashoff, Christiane Edinger, Lukas Foss, and Bruno Maderna.

Performance venues have included: The Kitchen, La Mama, Roulette, Spectrum, Issue Project Room, DIA Foundation, The Flea, Music with a View, Cooper Union, CCRMA, LA Sonic Odyssey, American Academy in Rome, De Isbreker-Amsterdam, Darmstadt, Bavarian Radio Munich, Brooklyn Philharmonic, among others.

His publications include: “Dialogues With Boulez” (Scarecrow Press, 2001), “Letter: A Memoir of Boulez” (Computer Music Journal, Summer 2016), “Pour Bruno” (‘Homages to Maderna’ Italian Classical edition-LIM Bologna, 2016), and “Rajas for John Cage” — a book of stories presented at The Wexner Center, 2016. In 2018, Di Petro was guest composer performer in Berlin at the Savvy Berlin Contemporary Festival in honor of Julius Eastman.

Composer/performer BEN NEILL (www.benneill.com) is the inventor of the mutantrumpet, a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument, and is widely recognized as a musical innovator through his recordings, performances and installations. Neill’s music blends influences from electronic, jazz, and minimalist music, blurring the lines between digital media and acoustic instrument performance.

Neill has recorded eleven albums of his music on labels including Universal/Verve, Thirsty Ear, Astralwerks, and Six Degrees. Currently he is an Artist in Residence at Nokia Bell Labs where he is exploring new modes of emotion transfer and communication between people using music, visual media, and hybrid instruments. Performances include BAM Next Wave Festival, Big Ears Festival, Lincoln Center, Whitney Museum of American Art, Bing Concert Hall at Stanford, Cite de la Musique Paris, Moogfest, Spoleto Festival, Umbria Jazz, Bang On A Can Festival, ICA London, Istanbul Jazz Festival, Vienna Jazz Festival, and the Edinburgh Festival, among many others. Neill has worked closely with many musical innovators including La Monte Young, John Cage, John Cale, Pauline Oliveros, Rhys Chatham, DJ Spooky, David Berhman, Mimi Goese, King Britt, and Nicolas Collins. Neill also leads concerts of La Monte Young’s The Second Dream of the High Tension Stepdown Line Transformer with an international brass ensemble; performances have recently been presented in New York, Amsterdam, Paris, Amsterdam, Huddersfield, Den Bosch, Oslo, Krems, Koln, Los Angeles, and Warsaw.

Neill began developing the mutantrumpet in the early 1980s. Initially an acoustic instrument (a combination of 3 trumpets and a trombone combined into one), he collaborated with synthesizer Robert Moog to integrate electronics. In 1992, while in residency at the STEIM research and development lab for new instruments in Amsterdam, Neill made the mutantrumpet fully computer interactive. In 2008 he created a new version of his instrument at STEIM, and returned there in 2016-17 to design Version 4.0 which will make its debut in 2019.

A native of North Carolina, Neill holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from the Manhattan School of Music. He studied composition with La Monte Young and was also mentored by composer/performer Jon Hassell in the early 1980s. Since 2008 he has been a music professor at Ramapo College of New Jersey.

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FOUNDER AND ARTISTIC DIRECTOR THOMAS BUCKNER (thomasbuckner.com)
For decades, baritone Thomas Buckner has dedicated himself to the promotion and performance of new and improvised music, collaborating with a host of new music luminaries including: Robert Ashley, Noah Creshevsky, Tom Hamilton, Earl Howard, Matthias Kawl, Leroy Jenkins, Bun Ching Lam, Annea Lockwood, Roscoe Mitchell, Phill Niblock, Wadada Leo Smith, Chinary Ung, Christian Wolff, and many others.

Buckner has appeared at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Herbst Theatre, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Berlin Spring Festival, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, the Prague Spring Festival, and the Angelica Festival of Bologna. He is featured on over 50 recordings, including 6 solo albums, the most recent being “New Music for Baritone & Chamber Ensemble,” which includes works by Annea Lockwood, Tania Leon, and Petr Kotik. Buckner also appears in the CD/DVD “Kirili et le Nymphéas (Hommage à Monet)” filmed at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, which houses the Monet’s celebrated Water Lilies murals.

For the past 31 years, Thomas Buckner has curated the Interpretations series in New York City, and continues to produce recordings on the Mutable Music label, introducing current artists and repertoire, as well as presenting important historic material, previously unavailable in CD format.

ABOUT INTERPRETATIONS
The Interpretations series, now in its 31st season, is a New York-based concert series focusing on the relationship between contemporary composers and their interpreters. Sometimes the interpreters are the composers themselves; more often, the series features performers who specialize in the interpretation of new music. Since its inception in 1989, Interpretations has featured leading figures in contemporary music and multimedia, including Muhal Richard Abrams, Robert Ashley, Anthony Braxton, Thomas Buckner, FLUX Quartet, Joseph Kubera, Annea Lockwood, and Alvin Lucier, Roscoe Mitchell, Phill Niblock, Pauline Oliveros, Ursula Oppens, and Morton Subotnick.

Interpretations began as a collaboration with Robert and Helene Browning and the World Music Institute, presenting concerts at Merkin Concert Hall, then at Roulette, at its Greene Street location in Soho. When Roulette moved to the current space in Brooklyn, Interpretations moved with it. Interpretations is thrilled to co-produce at Roulette, which has developed into a premier venue for new and innovative music, with excellent acoustics and world-class technical facilities.

For its 31st season, Interpretations has assembled an eclectic line-up of innovative composers and their interpreters, representing a wide variety of approaches to music-making.

ROULETTE:
509 Atlantic Ave. Downtown Brooklyn
2, 3, 4, 5, C, G, D, M, N, R, B & Q trains & LIRR.
Tickets, available online at www.interpretations.info, range from $15 for Seniors, Students, and Roulette Members to $20 for General Admission.

All concerts begin at 8pm unless otherwise noted.