The Arcade Orchestra:  A Tribute Concert for Dean Roberts

Is there a right way to remember someone? Probably not. Like the filming of a written story, it will necessarily betray the collection of images, sounds, impressions, projections that we created for ourselves. After Dean Roberts’ passing, many of us felt the need to come together in his absence, to commemorate him as a friend and as an artist. Music and a little irony felt—if not the only right way to do so—one that felt natural to us.

Inspired by his seminal 1998 record All Cracked Medias, we thought of coming together as the "cracked" pieces of an imaginary band, taking on an equally scattered and performance-based approach to music-making. The open-endedness, the loose form, the glitches, the unpredictable cracks in the seemingly uninterrupted surface of sound, the space and the moment as part of the piece, the stratification of sound. There is something extremely powerful about something, or someone, that could fall to pieces at any moment, yet doesn’t. The tension, the energy, and the beauty that reside in the very unpredictability of the unsettled parts of a whole.

On this evening, we, Andrea Belfi, Adrián de Alfonso, Margareth Kammerer, Stefano Pilia, Emanuele and Elisabetta Porcinai, and Valerio Tricoli, will be performing a continuous piece for percussions, guitars, voice and tape, in which nothing has its given place but somehow does ultimately fall into place. We’ll be drawing from Dean’s repertoire in our many different but equally personal ways, in the hope of creating a space for joyful remembrance.

Tashi Dorji, solo guitar set and trio with Jamie Stewart (guitar, electronics) & Tony Buck (drums)

Tashi Dorji is a guitarist and improvisational musician. Tashi’s idiosyncratic take on the instrument, one defined by movement and profound openness to technique, adds up to a post-colonial disembowlment of guitar traditions. His recorded output includes solo releases such as We Will Be Wherever the Fires Are Lit (Drag City 2024). 

Jamie Stewart is a musician and songwriter, best known as the founder and central member of the band Xiu Xiu. They have also worked on collaborative projects such as Creep Show (with Grouper’s Liz Harris) and Xiu Xiu Plays the Music of Twin Peaks (2016) and have contributed to theater, film, and art installations.

Tony Buck is a drummer and composer widely known as a founding member of The Necks. In addition, Buck is active in numerous projects across improvised and experimental music, performing with figures such as Jon Rose, Magda Mayas, and David Watson, and releasing solo work including Unearth (2017). 

Felix Henkelhausen Quintet

Wanja Slavin (alto sax), Uli Kempendorff (tenor sax), Valentin Gerhardus (piano, electronics), Felix Henkelhausen (double bass) & Leif Berger (drums)

Felix Henkelhausen first began writing for quintet in 2016, work that culminated in their album debut Misanthropic Tendencies (2021). The band toured widely in 2023, resulting in most of the material on their new release The Excruciating Pain of Boredom (2025). According to Henkelhausen "Improvisation and interplay take center stage in this production, and the material is meant to serve more as a springboard to explore these areas more quickly or easily—perhaps even more so than on the first album."

MAM test kitchen #4

MAM.manufaktur für aktuelle musik and Sarah Hennies perform music by Juan Hidalgo (arranged by Sarah Hennies) and a new collaborative work between Sarah Hennies and the ensemble.

Program:

Juan Hidalgo, Rrose Selavy. 6 moldy pieces for 6 sound fountains. an endless zaj etcetera (arranged by Sarah Hennies)

Sarah Hennies, new work

Alexina Hawkins (strings), Sarah Hennies (percussion), Paul Huebner (trumpet), Sabrina Ma (percussion), Sun-Young Nam (piano) & Sarah Saviet (violin)

with kind support from Musikfonds e.V.

Asmus Tietchens, solo electronics

Asmus Tietchens began recording sound experiments in 1965 with electronic musical instruments, synthesizers and tape loops. Peter Baumann of Tangerine Dream heard a recording of Tietchens’ music and offered to produce an album; the result was the album Nachtstücke in 1980. In 1984 he recorded Formen Letzer Hausmusik for Nurse With Wound’s label United Dairies. On this release he began moving toward more abstract sound collages. Tietchens specializes in irregular patterns of sonic abstractions that are suspended in gray drones to create cold textural voids from external references. His music is often inspired by and refers to the texts of the philosopher Emil Cioran.

Martina Bertoni (analogue synthesizer) & Stefan Schneider Monti (hybrid synthesizer)

Martina Bertoni and Stefan Schneider Monti's music is certainly not confined to the quality of their chosen instruments; rather, it's a curious proposal for spaces of encounter, of unlimited negotiation, and of uncontrolled asymmetries, where the resonant, singing oscillators effortlessly coalesce into a multilayered blossoming interdependency. 

Martina Bertoni is a composer and cellist whose work is focused on embodied sound practices and post-instrumental identities. Stefan Schneider Monti is perhaps best known as a collaborator of Hans Joachim Roedelius, Sofia Jernberg, Garth Erasmus, and Katharina Grosse not to mention his duo SO SNER with bass clarinetist Susanna Gartmayer. He is also the founder of the record label TAL.

Vidya Dengle (violin) with Shridatta M G (tabla), performing Raga Rageshree and Raga Jaijaiwanti

Vidya Dengle is a Hindustani classical violinist trained in the Guru–Shishya tradition under Ustad Zahoor Ahmed Khan of the Delhi Gharana. A regular performer on All India Radio, she has appeared at major festivals in India and given concerts across the globe. Since 1997 she has also conducted workshops in Hindustani music at various colleges and universities in the United States. She has been honoured as Guru at the Lalit Kala Kendra, Pune University, where she continues to impart traditional knowledge to selected disciples. 

Shridatta M G is a tabla artist with 18 years of training, currently under Pt. Dr. Udayraj Karpoor. He has performed at prestigious venues including Sankat Mochan Sangeet Samaroh, Dhwani Festival, and Ramakrishna Ashram and is a recipient of state and national scholarships from the Karnataka Sangeeta Nritya Academy and CCRT, New Delhi.

Labor Neunzehn's Cluster #40

Carla Boregas, Devoção, for roses, record players, synthesizers and electronics

The physical, the unseen, the unspeakable intertwined.
Sound as contemplation, reverence, commitment.
Aural environments as endeavors of enchantment, awe. Sonic gestures for communion. An act of love, creation, faith. Resonate with(in).

Nicolas Collins Playdate, featuring Nina Guo, Okkyung Lee & Michael Thieke

New and revived pieces for players and programs.  A few ideas, some structure, and a little software by Nicolas Collins. Creative execution by Nina Guo (voice), Okkyung Lee (cello) and Michael Thieke (clarinet).

Kaufmann/Gratkowski/de Joode

Achim Kaufmann, piano

Frank Gratkowski, clarinets and alto saxophone

Wilbert de Joode, double bass

Achim Kaufmann, Frank Gratkowski, and Wilbert de Joode first performed as a trio in early 2002 at a small venue in Amsterdam. Since then, they've toured internationally on a regular basis, continually developing, deepening, and enriching their musical rapport. The trio's work is documented in a string of notable albums: kwast (Konnex 2004); unearth (nuscope 2005); palaë (Leo Records 2007), geäder (gligg 2012), and oblengths (Leo Records 2016). In 2023, they released their first vinyl album, Canberra, recorded live at the SoundOut Festival in Australia.

Kaufmann/Gratkowski/de Joode combine the transparency of early 21st-century chamber music—silence, the moving into and out of noise regions, textural juxtapositions, the relics of almost tonal harmony surging up then evaporating just as quickly—with the energy, rhythmic momentum, and unpredictability of jazz and other rhythmically more aggressive musics.

John Butcher, saxophones

Florian Stoffner, guitar

Chris Corsano, drums

The trio Butcher–Stoffner–Corsano formed in 2022 for a week’s tour in Switzerland. Over seven nights, they produced music of both exhilarating power and subtle transformations. They have since released the live recordings Braids (Hat Hut) and The Glass Changes Shape (Relative Pitch).

“Butcher, the great stylist among saxophonists conjures up sound figures of exceptional beauty. Corsano's drumming is always masterful, and Stoffner's original guitar interjections are almost constantly pleasing. A lesson in poetry and masterly precision mechanics.” (Nickelsdorf Konfrontationen 2024 - Freistil) 

Archer

Dave Rempis (saxophones), Terrie Ex (electric guitar), Jon Rune Strøm (double bass) & Tollef Østvang (drums) 

Archer is a new quartet configuration featuring Dutch punk legend Terrie Ex alongside Chicago saxophonist Dave Rempis on the front line, backed by one of the hardest working rhythm sections in Norway with Jon Rune Strøm on bass and Tollef Østvang on drums. After touring Norway in 2023 and the U.S. in 2024, they released Sudden Dusk on Aerophonic Records in 2025.   

The duo of David Grubbs (guitar) & Jan St. Werner (electronics) renew their collaboration with Jules Reidy (guitar) that began at KM28 in June 2024 and continued throughout the fall during David Grubbs's extended residency in Berlin. 

David Grubbs, is a founding member of seminal post-rock bands such as Bastro, Squirrel Bait, and Gastr Del Sol (with Jim O’Rourke). He has authored several books, released fifteen solo albums, and has appeared on more than 200 releases.  

Jules Reidy is known for creating music that blends processed and acoustic instruments, primarily focusing on guitars. Their recorded work, characterized by non-traditional song forms, explores harmonic, rhythmic, and narrative elements.

Jan St. Werner, co-founder of the experimental music group Mouse on Mars, has an extensive background in music and sound art. In addition to his involvement in music production and installations, Werner has also taught at institutions such as MIT and AdBK Nuremberg.