David Leon: A Divine Echo
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https://roulette.org/event/david-leon...
For his 2024 Roulette Commission, saxophonist and composer David Leon premiers A Divine Echo, a hybrid work of chamber music and wordless puppet theatre. Engaging with love and compassionate sacrifice, aging, decay, and familial duty, A Divine Echo tells the story of a boy and his grandmother whom live together.
The piece is inspired by bunraku puppetry and contemporary musics alike, expanding on Leon’s compositional practice to include a trio of puppeteers alongside a trio of musicians on vibraphone, cello, and clarinet. Together, the disciplines work in measured counterpoint, elucidating the parallels between them while weaving a narrative about the bonds we share with loved ones.
David Leon - clarinet & alto saxophone
Matt Moran - vibraphone
Lester St. Louis - cello, electronics
Dorothy James - puppeteer
Emily Batsford - puppeteer
Andy Manjuck - puppeteer
David Leon is a Miami-born saxophonist, woodwinds player, composer, and improviser living in Brooklyn, New York. His work is guided by a persistent search for vitality through autonomy, contradiction, hyperbole, and humor. His work with the saxophone investigates alternate methods for producing a tone, refinement of these techniques, and development of a distinct vocabulary using these sounds; he melds this timbral approach with melodic and rhythmic phrasing from Cuban folkloric traditions, narrative playing, Free Jazz & avant-garde esthetics, and microtonality to reveal a personal conceit.
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This performance is presented live in Roulette's theater in Downtown Brooklyn. Roulette’s mission is to support artists creating new and adventurous art in all disciplines by providing them with a venue and resources to realize their creative visions and to build an audience interested in the evolution of experimental art.