Artists’conversations

Jim Staley

American trombonist and improvising musician, founder and director of Roulette Intermedium

Jim Staley, in concert at White Street Studio with Alain Kirili’s sculptures, 2006 (photo©Ariane Lopez-Huici)

“Depuis les années 50, c’est une grande tradition dans le quartier d’avoir des « lofts sessions » : on utilise l’espace d’un loft pour la musique de pointe. Donc c’est une avant-garde qui est associée à l’avant-garde des arts plastiques.Et dans ce quartier la que ça se passe, donc j’ai voulu assumer cette tradition-là et protéger en premier lieu cette musique.”

Alain Kirili, New York, 2008

excerpt from Alain Kirili, sculpteur de tous les éléments, a documentary film by Sandra Paugam, 2009

Roulette’s first location in Jim Staley’s loft in Tribeca, 1978

a few blocks from Alain Kirili and Ariane Lopez-Huici’s artist loft in Tribeca

What made you turn your home into a performance space?

Everybody was doing things in their lofts at that time — theater, music, dance, whatever. I thought, Let’s try it out; people would get to know the place, and then it won’t be so hard to get somebody to come hear your own work.
The first one was supposed to be Ben Johnston, but he postponed. So Malcolm Goldstein [a violinist and composer] ended up being the first concert. The place was filled, with Cage and [Merce] Cunningham and everybody in the scene. The room sounded great, it looked great, it felt great. So all these people said, Well, I’d like to do something.

Jim Staley, interviewed by By Steve Smith, 2024

from The Man Who Made Roulette Into New York’s Music Lab, NYTimes, May 18, 2024