Contemporary East I: DoYeon Kim / Leo Chang
$25 advance, $30 doors ($20 student/senior 65+ with ID)
- Doyeon Kim, gayageum, voice, & percussion
- Peter Evans, trumpet
- Matt Mitchell, piano
- Sam Minaie, double bass
- Tomas Fujiwara, drums
- Leo Chang, jeonmo (electronic feedback hat), amplified gongs, voice, electronics, piri, & tapyeongso (double reeds)
- Alex Zhang Hungtai, electronics & saxophone
- Che Chen, flute, megaphone, percussion, & funnel reed
The series kicks off with former Roulette Awarded Artist DoYeon Kim, a renowned traditional gayageum player with a uniquely broad approach to music which incorporates Korean music, jazz, and improvisation, among other influences. Former commissioned artist Leo Chang will follow with Young Mong, his project with Alex Zhang Hungtai and Che Chen, whose long form improvisational experiments create a rootless, stateless, and borderless state of mind. Young Mong performed at Roulette in June of 2024 with Tashi Dorji for Chang's commission. Chang lived as an expat in Singapore, Taipei, and Shanghai, and moved to the United States in 2011.
Set 1: DoYeon Kim Quintet
Set 2: Leo Chang & Young Mong
This program will be presented in-person at Roulette, and streamed live at 8pm Eastern on the Roulette YouTube channel.
About Contemporary East
Contemporary East is founded by Yuko Fujiyama, a renowned classically trained pianist whose improvisational compositions and collaborations have established her as an essential part of the experimental scene in New York City since 90s. During her long career, she has performed with scores of musicians and has always had an interest in the work of Asian and Asian American artists who bring their particular instruments, training and sensibility to expand the world of innovative music. Many of these, veterans and young artists alike, should be better known to larger audiences.
https://www.contemporaryeast.org/About Young Mong
Young Mong is a multi-instrumental and electronic improvised music project led by Alex Zhang Hungtai.
"There was almost an immediate clarity that this musical connection could only come out of migration. Relating to the transience of homes. We had a mutual understanding that while seeing different parts of the world is a privilege, the forces of Western imperialism are so tangible when witnessing so many environments that have been built in the image of the oppressors; brought up under the myth that the only way to imagine freedom is to imitate the colonizers. Instead, we improvise and experiment with the rootless, stateless, borderless. So that this music has no name, no claim to any land or place. No identity, no authenticity, no self. This music is temple in jungle. Shrine to meditative unpredictability."
http://www.listentoleo.com/young-mongAbout Doyeon Kim, gayageum, voice, & percussion
Doyeon Kim is a traditionally trained Korean artist playing the gayageum, a traditional Korean string instrument. She has developed a uniquely broad approach to music, which incorporates Korean music, jazz, and improvisation, among other influences, and is credited with introducing the gayageum into the improvisational music scene worldwide. Her recent collaborative projects have broadened to include dancers, actors, and visual artists. Philosophically, she strives to demonstrate a broader approach to music by drawing from Korean tradition, improvisation, and the development of original playing techniques. "Over years of study…I became curious about how I could push past what the gayageum was supposed to do, and in that process, learned to push myself to a more honest me," says Kim.
During her traditional Korean training, Kim won numerous international competitions for her gayageum performances, including the Dong-A Ilbo Traditional Music Competition (Gold Prize, 2009), and the On-Nala Korean Music Competition (Gold Prize, 2011). She is also a graduate of the Contemporary Improvisation Department at the New England Conservatory of Music, where she was the first student ever admitted to the school playing any kind of Korean traditional instrument, and has recently joined the faculty.
Kim has worked with numerous composers, performing several world premieres, and has been an invited guest lecturer for gayageum and Asian music at many universities nationally and internationally. Her first album, GaPi (2017), featured an intimate synthesis of traditional music and jazz, and was nominated for a 2018 Korean Grammy Award in the crossover album category. More recently, Kim was an invited music director for Gyeonggi Sinawi Orchestra, a traditional music orchestra in Korea, was recognized by Grammy.com as one of the 7 Musicians Pushing Ancient Asian Instruments Into The Future (2021), and is performing projects at Roulette as a Van Lier Fellow (2023).
https://www.passim.org/artists/doyeon/About Peter Evans, trumpet
About Matt Mitchell, piano
About Sam Minaie, double bass
About Tomas Fujiwara, drums
About Leo Chang, jeonmo (electronic feedback hat), amplified gongs, voice, electronics, piri, & tapyeongso (double reeds)
Leo Chang is a Korean improviser, composer, performer, and scholar of experimental music currently living in Brooklyn. Born in Seoul, Leo lived as an expat in Singapore, Taipei, and Shanghai, and then moved to the United States in 2011. Needing to assimilate to various cultures and thereby cultivating an irreverence towards rules and norms from a young age, Leo expresses rootlessness and multiplicity within identities through his music. His art is an act of home-making inspired by various musical and ideological movements that have sought to question power dynamics and imagine egalitarian possibilities. His primary methods are improvisation, written text, graphical notation, and electronic processing. Leo frequently performs as/with VOCALNORI, which amplifies vocal sounds through gongs via electronic instruments. He also plays Korean double reed instruments (piri and taepyungso) in untraditional ways, often processing his piri playing using electronics. Leo has shared his artistic practice at various gatherings and venues: notably the Vision Festival, Pierre Boulez Saal, Pioneer Works, NYC Winter Jazzfest, Ostrava Days New Music Festival, New York City Electro-Acoustic Music Festival, and the International Computer Music Conference. His projects have been supported by Roulette Intermedium, the Brooklyn Arts Council, Center for Performance Research, Korea Foundation, Arts for Art, EMPAC at Rensselaer, Chashama, and the Tank, among others.
http://www.listentoleo.com/About Alex Zhang Hungtai, electronics & saxophone
About Che Chen, flute, megaphone, percussion, & funnel reed
Che Chen is a New York-based composer and multi-instrumentalist, best known as a central figure in the group 75 Dollar Bill. Chen has collaborated with several influential avant-garde and improvisational musicians like Jorge Boehringer (Core of the Coalman), Rolyn Hu, Chie Mukai, Tori Kudo, Tetuzi Akiyama, and Tony Conrad.
https://chechen.bandcamp.com/