Mikel Rouse: Hemisphere

A special performance coinciding with the release of the video album ‘Hemisphere’. This solo performance will revisit Rouse’s 2010 avante-roots album ‘Corner Loading’ with a fresh interpretation including ‘Memory Projections’ and special musical guests. Joining Rouse will be NS curator Jeff McErlain, bringing his blues guitar skills to Rouse’s unique take on Americana. This performance is part of MR60, a year long celebration of Rouse’s career including radio broadcasts, video installations and concerts.

Mikel Rouse is a New York-based composer, director, performer and recording artist hailed as “a composer many believe to be the best of his generation.” (NY Times) His works include 30 records, 7 films, and a trilogy of media operas: Failing Kansas, Dennis Cleveland and The End Of Cinematics. His work has frequently appeared on Top Ten lists around the country. In 1995, Rouse premiered and directed the first opera in his trilogy: Failing Kansas, inspired by Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. In 1996 Mr. Rouse premiered and directed the modern talk show opera Dennis Cleveland, hailed by The Village Voice as “the most exciting and innovative new opera since Einstein on the Beach”. In 2008, The Luminato Festival in Toronto, Ontario presented Mr. Rouse’s entire Opera Trilogy in repertory. In 2010, Mr. Rouse’s New York season included the BAM premiere of Gravity Radio; 2 CD releases; 2 visual art exhibits: Passport: 30 Years Drawn on the Road (as part of the New York Pubic Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center’s announced acquisition of Rouse’s archive) and False Doors, an exhibition at the Margarete Roeder Gallery and a 2 week retrospective screening of Rouse’s films at Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center. In 2012 Rouse became the first eDream Visiting Research Artist at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Urbana, IL. Rouse recently premiered the techno opera The Demo, based on the 1968 demo of Douglas Engelbart. The Demo premiered at Bing Concert Hall in the spring of 2015 followed by worldwide international press coverage including The New York Times, Wired Magazine and ABC News. He has received commissions from Brooklyn Academy of Music, Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and Betty Freeman. Rouse’s compositions have been performed at Lincoln Center, the New York State Theater and throughout the United States and Europe and the Pacific Rim.

www.mikelrouse.com