Artists Studio: Matana Roberts

ABOUT THE ARTISTS STUDIO When the Veterans Room reopened in 2016 after an extensive revitalization, it was lauded as “a riot of color, visual rhythm and contrasting details,” and “if walls could speak, these would alternately whisper of refinement and roar with audacity” (Wall Street Journal). Designed by Louis C. Tiffany & Co., Associated Artists, the room is a monument to the American Aesthetic Movement and represents the innovation of exceptional young artisans approaching the decorative arts with a bold new vision. This season, the series adds to the exuberance of the space with interventions by some of today’s most creative voices who have a distinct relationship to sound with a visual aesthetic that blurs the boundaries between installation and performance. Curated by jazz pianist, composer, and MacArthur fellow Jason Moran, these interventions utilize the newly restored space as visual material, while allowing these imaginative innovators to explore exciting new directions in their practice.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

CHARLEMAGNE PALESTINE

JULIANA HUXTABLE

The multifaceted artist creates an immersive, site-specific installation in the Veterans Room that invites audiences into his colorful, fantastical world.

Straddling the worlds of art, fashion, and night life, the artist and DJ creates a new work combining video, sound, spoken word, and performance.

September 14

October 10

ABOUT THE VETERANS ROOM The Veterans Room is among the most significant surviving interiors of the American Aesthetic Movement, and the most significant remaining intact interior in the world by Louis C. Tiffany and Co., Associated Artists. This newly formed collective led by Tiffany included some of the most significant American designers of the 19th century at early stages of their very distinguished careers: Stanford White, Samuel Colman, and Candace Wheeler among them. The design of the room by these artisans was exotic, eclectic, and full of experimentation, as noted by Decorator and Furnisher in 1885 that “the prepondering styles appear to be the Greek, Moresque and Celtic, with a dash of Egyptian, the Persian and the Japanese in the appropriate places.”

artisans and experts in Tiffany glass, fine woodworking, and decorative arts.

The revitalization of the Veterans Room follows Herzog & de Meuron’s design approach for the Armory building, which seeks to highlight the distinct qualities and existing character of each individual room while interweaving contemporary elements to improve its function. Even more so than in other rooms at the Armory, Herzog & de Meuron’s approach to the Veterans Room is to amplify the beauty of the room’s original vision through adding contemporary reconstructions of lost historic material and subtle additions with the same ethos and creative passion as the original artisans to infuse a modern energy into a harmonious, holistic design.

A monument of late 19th-century decorative arts, the Veterans Room is the fourth period room at the Armory completed (out of 18). The revitalization of the room responds to the original The room’s restoration is part of an ongoing $215-million exuberant vision for the room’s design, bringing into dialogue transformation, which is guided by the understanding that the some of the most talented designers of the 19th and 21st Armory’s rich history and the patina of time are essential to centuries – Associated Artists with Herzog & de Meuron, Platt its character, with a design process for the period rooms that Byard Dovell White Architects, and a team of world-renowned emphasizes close collaboration between architect and artisan. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ The restoration and renovation of the Veterans Room was made possible by The Thompson Family Foundation, Inc., Susan and Elihu Rose, Charina Endowment Fund, Lisa and Sanford B. Ehrenkranz, Almudena and Pablo Legorreta, Assemblymember Dan Quart and the New York State Assembly, Liz and Emanuel Stern, Adam R. Flatto, Olivia Tournay Flatto, Kenneth S. Kuchin, R. Mark and Wendy Adams, American Express, Rebecca Robertson and Byron Knief, Amy and Jeffrey Silverman, the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Fund of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Anonymous (2).

Cover photo: James Ewing

2018 ARTISTS STUDIO

IN THE NEWLY RESTORED VETERANS ROOM

Tuesday, April 24 at 7:00pm and 9:00pm Veterans Room, Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory

BLOOD.BLUE(S): A REMEMBRANCE Matana Roberts: Saxophone, electronics, moving image, conduction Snare Sextet: Kate Gentile, Tomas Fujiwara, Qasim Ali Naqvi, Mike Pride, Ryan Sawyer, Justin Veloso Wordspeak: Geng This performance is approximately 60 minutes with no intermission.

SEASON SPONSORS

SERIES SPONSORS

The Artists Studio is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the city council, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Support for Park Avenue Armory’s artistic season has been generously provided by the Charina Endowment Fund, the Altman Foundation, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, The Emma and Georgina Bloomberg Foundation, the Marc Haas Foundation, The Kaplen Brothers Fund, the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, the Leon Levy Foundation, the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, and the Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS Matana Roberts is an internationally renowned composer, band leader, saxophonist, sound experimentalist, and mixed-media practitioner. Roberts works in many contexts and mediums, including improvisation, dance, poetry, and theater. She made two records as a core member of the Sticks And Stones quartet in the early 2000s and has gone on to release a diverse body of solo and ensemble work under her own name on Constellation and Central Control over the past decade. She is perhaps best known for her acclaimed Coin Coin project, a multi-chapter work of “panoramic sound quilting” that aims to expose the mystical roots and channel the intuitive spirit-raising traditions of American creative expression while maintaining a deep and substantive engagement with narrativity, history, community, and political expression within improvisatory musical structures.

Constellation began documenting the Coin Coin project in 2011 and has released the first three of a projected twelve albumlength chapters to date. The work has been widely and highly praised for its stylistic innovations and narrative power.

A self-taught mixed media composer, the Chicago-born Roberts earned two advanced degrees in performance. Much of her formal training, however, was received from free arts programs in the American public school system. She is a past member of the Black Rock Coalition (BRC) and the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), and a lifetime member of the Tri-M Music Honors Society. She has been a Van Lier Fellow, a Brecht Forum Fellow, a Copeland Fellow, an ICASP fellow, a 2013 FCA fellow and a seven-time Alpert Award In The Arts nominee, receiving the award in 2014. In 2014 she also received the Doris Duke Impact Award, and in 2016 received the Doris Duke Artist Award. She has recently been awarded a DAAD research fellowship for 2019 and a Robert Rauschenberg Captiva residency for 2020.

Roberts has been invited to teach, lecture, run workshops, and take up artistic residencies in countless places under diverse conditions and with diverse communities over the past decade.

She is a past faculty member of the Banff Creative Music Workshop, School for Improvised Music, and Bard College MFA, where she is currently ongoing faculty. She was co-chair of the Music and Sound Department from 2011-12.

Roberts has played with and alongside Rob Mazurek, Myra Melford, Vijay Iyer, Roscoe Mitchell, Greg Tate, Nicole Mitchell, Henry Grimes, Kyp Malone, Meshell Ndegeocello, Jayne Cortez, Seb Rochford, Fred Anderson, Latasha Diggs, George Lewis, Tyshawn Sorey, David Berhman, Pauline Oliveros, Reg E. Gaines, Daniel Givens, Savion Glover, Anthony Braxton, Kid Lucky, Liberty Ellman, Amina Claudine Meyers, Jeff Parker, Handsome Furs, Robert Mitchell, Quest Love, Julius Hemphill Sextet, Merce Cunningham, Joe Maneri, Beans, Bill T Jones, Josh Abrams, Chad Taylor, Dave Douglas

and John Herndon among many others. She has recorded as a guest musician with rock, pop and electronic groups as diverse as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, TV On The Radio, Savath & Savalas, Thee Silver Mt. Zion, Deerhoof, and performance artists My Barbarian.

In the summer of 2015 Roberts held a residency at the Whitney Museum of American Art, during which she produced a series of research-based sound works entitled i call america. The following summer, she had her first solo show at Fridman Gallery in New York City and her first European exhibition at the Bergen Kunstall in Bergen Norway entitled I Call America II. These were presented as an expanded version of the Whitney exhibition. In 2018 she presented her second US exhibition of mixed media work, entitled “Jump at the Sun” again at Fridman Gallery in New York City. Roberts currently works between New York City and London.

Tomas Fujiwara is a Brooklyn-based drummer and composer.

He is an active player in some of the most exciting music of the current generation with his bands Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up, The Tomas Fujiwara Trio, and his newest project Triple Double who’s debut was on over 20 Best-of-2017 lists including ones by NPR, The Village Voice, and All About Jazz; his collaborative duo with cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum; the collective trio Thumbscrew (with Mary Halvorson and Michael Formanek); and a diversity of creative work with Anthony Braxton, Matana Roberts, Joe Morris, Nicole Mitchell, Ben Goldberg, Tomeka Reid, Amir ElSaffar, and Benoit Delbecq.

Geng is a sound artist born and based in New York City. He is the founder of collective plus label PTP (fka Purple Tape Pedigree) and has been active since the mid-90s in the city’s underground and experimental communities. From hip-hop to punk, hardcore to electronic/noise, he has channeled these influences towards a sonic language focused on meditation and confrontation. Through manipulating space and the weaving of frequencies—ranging from ASMR tape loops to walls of blasting pedalboard dread, plus found dialogue and his own range of disembodied vocals—Geng explores trauma, violence, sleep paralysis, aquaphobia, and the communication bridge between self-actualized identity and spirit. Production credits include Moor Mother, Diamond Terrifier Cipher, CRUSHED, Guerrilla Group (Taiwan), The Diplomats, as well as an album for Ascetic House entitled Pain Of Mind as his King Vision Ultra alias. Geng has been a featured performer at Issue Project Room, MoMA PS1 Sunday Sessions (in collaboration with Matana Roberts and Black Quantum Futurism) and Warm Up, Ende Tymes IX, Sonic Acts Festival/Progress Bar (Amsterdam), 3HD Festival (Berlin), Boiler Room, and Forward Festival, among others.

Kate Gentile is a Brooklyn-based drummer and composer.

Her music explores unconventional and often complex harmonic and rhythmic material, as well as the intersections of acoustic and electronic sounds. Gentile’s compositions have been described as “...hyper-detailed...designed to spur multifaceted improvisation.” In addition to the quartet with Jeremy Viner, Matt Mitchell and Adam Hopkins on her debut album Mannequins, other projects Kate is a part of include Snark Horse, in which she co-leads and shares compositional duties with pianist Matt Mitchell; Matt Mitchell’s projects Phalanx Ambassadors and A Pouting Grimace; and Dustin Carlson’s septet Air Ceremony. Kate has also worked with Anthony Braxton, Marty Ehrlich, Michael Formanek, Helado Negro, Ted Reichman, Chris Speed, Anna Webber, and John Zorn.

Qasim Ali Naqvi is a Pakistani American musician. He is perhaps best known as the drummer of Dawn of Midi, of which he has been a member since 2008. Outside of Dawn of Midi, Naqvi is a composer and an electronic musician and has released a number of albums under his own name. His chamber and orchestral music has been performed by yMusic, The Now Ensemble, The Crash Ensemble, Stargaze, The Loos Ensemble, The New Century Players, The Contemporary Music Ensemble of NYU, Jennifer Koh, The Helsinki Chamber Choir, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW Season, The Bienen Contemporary/Early Vocal Ensemble, and the BBC Concert Orchestra. More recently, Naqvi released two albums of analog electronic music, titled Chronology and Film. Both works emphasize Moog and modular synthesizer systems, a growing area of interest for Naqvi.

Born and raised in Maine and based out of New York since 2000, Mike Pride currently leads From Bacteria To Boys, I Hate Work piano trio, and the 7-drummer installation Drummer’s Corpse.

Pride is renowned for his ability to excel in a wide range of genres and ensembles. He has worked with everyone from improvised music icon Anthony Braxton to punk legends Millions Of Dead Cops, toured extensively on four continents, and appeared on more than 100 recordings. Pride is also a popular sideman and leader/co-leader of many active ensembles including Pulverize The Sound, The Spanish Donkey, and Period—bands that span the worlds of modern-jazz, avant-rock, modern composition, noise and doom metal improv. He has spent the last few years touring arenas internationally with Locksmith Isadore, while opening for the comedian Amy Schumer. He is also a busy educator and clinician, a soundtrack composer for TV shows, podcasts, video games and independent films, and an exhibited visual artist.

Born in San Antonio, TX, Ryan Sawyer started playing drums at the age of 11. He learned his craft with an early exposure to not only rock and jazz, but also the colloquial conjunto, zydeco, and punk rock musics of his home town. At age 19 he recorded the now highly influential first record with At The Drive-In. Sawyer moved to New York in 1997 to further his interest in improvised music, and leads a balanced life between composed and improvised performance. He has supported and collaborated with diverse names such as Rhys Chatham, Charles Gayle, TV on the Radio, Boredoms, Thurston Moore, Nik Zinner, Kid Millions, Fiery Furnaces, Trevor Dunn, Gang Gang Dance, Mekons, and Scarlett Johansson, to name a few.

One of the more involved collaborations Sawyer has been working on is Lone Wolf & Cub, a project with his partner Suzanne Rogaleski. They have performed at Deitch Projects, Socrates Sculpture Garden, twice been asked to Ox-Bow artist residency, and have taught at Cal Arts.

Justin Veloso is a sound artist and percussionist living in Central Oregon. He spent ten years in NYC studying and participating in the DIY and experimental music communities of downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn. Through his diverse interests, he has had opportunities to play with a variety of musicians including Zs, Jolie Holland, Aldous Harding, Butch Morris, Daniel Carter and Ron Anderson. He has also led and co-led his own groups including Rapstar, Jay-Zee-Sushi-Car, Plays Drums and Super Seaweed Sex Scandal. While in NYC he was involved with running the The Freedom Garden, a DIY art space and record label based in Bushwick. He is in the process of building Wildfire Recording.

Production Acknowledgements Sascha von Oertzen, Sound Designer John Chrils, Audio and Video Technician This evening is dedicated to the force of nature that is/was/will always be Cecil Percival Taylor (March 25, 1929 – April 5, 2018).

May he rest forever in eternal peace.