The High Zero Festival usually brings musicians from all over the world to Baltimore, but this year’s 20th-anniversary concert series flips the format by bringing High Zero Collective members to Roulette in NYC for two nights of improvised sets with NY musicians. The Baltimore musicians will also present concerts in Chicago and Baltimore as part of the anniversary-celebration festival. The Roulette performances will follow the festival’s intriguing model: Each evening’s four curated sets aim to combine musicians who have never played together before. These musicians will improvise together for typically 20-30 minutes.

〰️September 19〰️
Set 1: Tom Boram, Ikue Mori, C. Spencer Yeh
Set 2: Owen Gardner, Margaret Schedel, Shelly Purdy
Set 3: Jamal Moore, Jeff Carey, Ras Moshe, JD Parran, Andrew Bernstein
Set 4: Samuel Burt, Lea Bertucci, Michael Evans

〰️September 20〰️
Set 1: Bonnie Jones, Laura Ortman
Set 2: Sandy Ewen, Rose Hammer Burt, M.C. Schmidt
Set 3: Amirtha Kidambi, CK Barlow, John Berndt, Tom Hamilton
Set 4: Chuck Bettis, Stewart Mostofsky, Jaimie Branch

Since 1999, the annual High Zero Festival of Experimental Improvised Music has brought together more than 200 musicians and performers from around the world, mixing and matching them in all new combinations with local Baltimore improvisers in never-before-seen collaborations. Organized by a fluid group of Baltimore artists, the High Zero Collective also organizes the Red Room concert series (ongoing since 1996), the Worlds in Collusion festival as part of Baltimore’s Artscape, and the Diffusion festival celebrating multichannel electroacoustic music.