Bobby Previte’s Rhapsody Band at Roulette

Rhapsody is an acoustic, narrative song cycle which incorporates written music, improvisation, and vocals with lyrics to create an evening length performance. Rhapsody twists and turns, landing on song ‘events’ but never ending there, instead, spinning off in other directions, only to land again on a vocal moment, sung by Jen Shyu. Using acoustic harp (Zeena Parkins), piano (John Medeski), acoustic guitars (Nels Cline), and drums, autoharp, harmonica and percussion (Bobby Previte) the piece places the listener ‘in transit’ — traveling to an unknown place that subtly changes over the course of time, until in the end, they arrive at a surprise destination. Rhapsody was commissioned by the 2015 Greenfield Prize in Music at the Hermitage Artist Retreat. The recording will be released in March 2018 on RareNoise Records....

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Rhapsody is an acoustic, narrative song cycle which incorporates written music, improvisation, and vocals with lyrics to create an evening length performance. Rhapsody twists and turns, landing on song ‘events’ but never ending there, instead, spinning off in other directions, only to land again on a vocal moment, sung by Jen Shyu. Using acoustic harp (Zeena Parkins), piano (John Medeski), acoustic guitars (Nels Cline), and drums, autoharp, harmonica and percussion (Bobby Previte) the piece places the listener ‘in transit’ — traveling to an unknown place that subtly changes over the course of time, until in the end, they arrive at a surprise destination. Rhapsody was commissioned by the 2015 Greenfield Prize in Music at the Hermitage Artist Retreat. The recording will be released in March 2018 on RareNoise Records.

Bobby Previte is a composer and performer whose work explores the nexus between notated and improvised music. One of the seminal figures of the 1980s New York Downtown scene, Previte is the recipient of the 2015 Greenfield Prize for music, and was a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in 2012. Leading a plethora of diverse ensembles from the drums, he has collaborated with many of the leading lights in and beyond the world of music.



This event is being streamed live on Wave Farm Radio, and recorded for future broadcast on Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7-FM in New York’s Upper Hudson Valley. Listen below on March 2nd at 8pm.


This performance is part of series supported, in part, with funds from GENERATE: The Frances Richard Fund for Innovative Artists of Promise. Instituted in 2014, GENERATE aims to provide immediate, practical assistance to artists, helping them achieve ambitious work to be presented in our theater. Click here for more information about how you can contribute to GENERATE.

GENERATE: The Frances Richard Fund for Innovative Artists of Promise is made possible, in part, with funds from The Arts Council of the Southern Finger Lakes, The Jerome Foundation, mediaThe foundation, Inc., The Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The New York State Council on the Arts, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Roulette’s Board of Directors and the generosity of our New & Adventurous audiences.

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