Roulette Intermedium
The Street view of Roulette Intermedium, Brooklyn
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| Address | 509 Atlantic Avenue (at the corner of 3rd Avenue) Brooklyn, NY United States |
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| Public transit | Atlantic Terminal |
| Owner | YWCA of Brooklyn |
| Type | Performing arts center |
| Capacity | 400 |
| Construction | |
| Opened | 1928 |
| Rebuilt | 2011 |
| Architect | Frederick Lee Ackerman and Alexander B. Trowbridge. Renovation by Warren Freyer |
| Website | |
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Roulette Intermedium is an arena and building opened in 1978 by Jim Staley and rebuilt in 2011, located in Brooklyn and owned by the YMCA of Brooklyn. It is commonly used as an arena for events relating to art and culture.
Roulette Intermedium is a not-for-profit performing arts organization. Its 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.
Roulette Intermedium Inc. was founded in 1978 by trombonist Jim Staley, sound-artist David Weinstein, and Dan Senn as an artists’ space for the presentation of music, dance and intermedia. Named in honor of Weinstein’s piece Café Roulette —"an homage to Dada and to chance operations in music" — and housed in Staley’s TriBeCa loft, Roulette was a product of the burgeoning Downtown Music scene and produced between 50 and 90 concerts a year.
Founder Staley put it this way:
"The whole aesthetic and direction was founded on the two Johns: John Coltrane and John Cage. … I’ve always felt that if you’re talking about the American avant-garde, don’t just talk about Cage or the Downtown minimalist scene; you have to talk about the avant-jazz scene, too. There’s just as extensive a scene going on in jazz as there is in the new music, classical, electronics world. So that’s always been an essential part of our programming."
According to Downtown Music IV: Loft Jazz, Roulette emerged as "one of the most important venues for improvised music" during the late 1970s into the 1980s. In 1985, Roulette presented "a festival of improvisers that included most of the important musicians on the scene."
In 1997, a French restaurant moved in "downstairs and the music blasting from the club was louder than the concert." Staley added, "That was the beginning of the end." While the organization stayed in place for a few more years, by 2003, changes in NYC loft law compelled Roulette to seek out new performance venue options. Over the next three years, Roulette presented at a number of locations around the city including at The Flea, The Performing Garage, Symphony Space and at Location One, a storefront space in SoHo located at 20 Greene Street.
By 2006, Roulette had begun performing regularly at Location One, but the search for a more accommodating space continued. Then in 2010, Roulette found a new home.
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Wikipedia