The Interpretations Series 36th season continues Thursday December 4th, 2025, 8:00 PM with a split bill featuring the adventurous new music group Ghost Ensemble, and Brooklyn-based saxophonist/composer Sam Weinberg with his longstanding trio.
In keeping with its emphasis on collaborating with living composers, Ghost Ensemble will perform the New York premiere of Sarah Davachi’s longform ensemble work Basso Continuo, commissioned by the group. The slowly unfolding work stretches the Baroque practice of harmonic accompaniment (Basso continuo), to an extreme duration, as it explores shifting microtonal fields within an alternate tuning system. The program will also include the live premier of Pleistocene Plaint for solo bass flute by the group’s founder and Artistic Director Ben Richter. Joined by Henry Fraser (bass) and Jason Nazary (drums) Sam Weinberg will lead the longstanding trio in a new set of material exploring contemporary currents in jazz and free improvisation.
The concert will take place at Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn, NY. Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for students & seniors, available at Roulette.org and Interpretations.info.
About the artists:
Sam Weinberg is a saxophonist, composer, and improviser from New York City. His work attempts to forge and develop a distinct intervallic lexicon which is both mutable and structurally coherent. He has released three records for trio since 2023: Implicatures (Astral Spirits, with Chris Lightcap and Tom Rainey), and two with his long-standing group with Henry Fraser and Jason Nazary (Plays Quarter Notes and Other Notes, and Of Peeling Passage: Live at Sisters). Weinberg has also focused heavily on solo work in the last several years, which has resulted in the albums Academy, My Druthers, Live at the Oche, with another forthcoming in 2025. He has recently performed in various constellations with Thomas Buckner, Kieran Daly, Kevin Sun, Nate Wooley, Eivind Opsvik, Kayvon Gordon, Erica Dicker, Sara Schoenbeck, Weasel Walter, Brandon Seabrook, Michael Vatcher, and many others.
Ghost Ensemble is dedicated to experimental music that expands perceptual horizons to foster individual and community transformation. Established in 2012, the ensemble conducts long-term exploratory workshops with a broad range of composers and creators to nurture adventurous new music over multiple seasons. Providing opportunities for new musical concepts that may not easily find a platform in traditional settings, the ensemble commissions, germinates, premieres, and tours music that moves beyond boundaries of genre, style, and scene. Performances and workshops also often incorporate Deep Listening, a practice pioneered by ensemble mentor Pauline Oliveros that encourages a heightened awareness of sound, space, and community. Ghost Ensemble’s recent collaborators have included Elizabeth Adams, Marguerite Brown, Laura Cetilia, Sarah Davachi, Kyle Gann, Assaf Gidron, Liisa Hirsch, Ravi Kittappa, Catherine Lamb, Miya Masaoka, Phill Niblock, Andrew C. Smith, Lester St. Louis, Teodora Stepančić, Cassia Streb, Yasunao Tone, Chaz Underriner, Lucie Vítková, KCM Walker, and Kristina Wolfe. The ensemble has released four albums: We Who Walk Again (2018, Indexical), with music by Macklay, Oliveros, and Richter; Mountain Air (2021, Indexical), with music by Oliveros, Brown, and Stepančić; Ben Richter’s Rewild (2024, New World Records); and Catherine Lamb’s interius/exterius (2025, greyfade).
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Founded by baritone Thomas Buckner, The Interpretations series is a New York-based concert series focusing on the relationship between contemporary composers and their interpreters. Sometimes the interpreters are the composers themselves; more often, the series features performers who specialize in the interpretation of new music. Since its inception in 1989, Interpretations has featured leading figures in contemporary music and multimedia, including Muhal Richard Abrams, Robert Ashley, Anthony Braxton, Thomas Buckner, FLUX Quartet, Joseph Kubera, Annea Lockwood, and Alvin Lucier, Roscoe Mitchell, Phill Niblock, Pauline Oliveros, Ursula Oppens, and Morton Subotnick.
Interpretations began as a collaboration with Robert and Helene Browning and the World Music Institute, presenting concerts at Merkin Concert Hall, then at Roulette, at its Greene Street location in Soho. When Roulette moved to the current space in Brooklyn, Interpretations moved with it. Interpretations is thrilled to co-produce at Roulette, which has developed into a premiere venue for new and innovative music, with excellent acoustics and world-class technical facilities.
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ROULETTE:
509 Atlantic Ave. Downtown Brooklyn
2, 3, 4, 5, C, G, D, M, N, R, B & Q trains & LIRR.
Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for students for students & seniors, available at Roulette.org and Interpretations.info. All concerts begin at 8pm unless otherwise noted.
