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Press Releases
Wet Ink Releases Missing Scenes
June 28, 2023 | By Morahan Arts and Media
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Leah Rankin | Morahan Arts and Media
leah@morahanartsandmedia.com | 646-378-9386
Wet Ink Releases
Missing ScenesThird Studio Album Featuring Wet
Ink Large Ensemble With Works by Kate Soper, Alex Mincek, and Sam PlutaOut Today on Carrier Records
Album Launched as Part of Season Finale Concert Showcasing
2022-23 Wet Ink Artists-in-Residence at
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on June 24Album Page:
https://wetinkensemble.bandcamp.com/album/missing-scenesPhysical Copies Available Upon Request
New York, NY (June 23, 2023) — New York City-based new music collective Wet Ink Ensemble today releases its third studio album featuring the Wet Ink Large Ensemble on Carrier Records. The album features works composed by Wet Ink core members Alex Mincek, Sam Pluta, and Kate Soper.
The album is named for Kate Soper’s three-movement Missing Scenes composed in 2021. The first movement, The Wings of the Dove is a book about concealing with text taken from Henry James’s novel of the same name, along with text adapted from Psalm 55. The second movement, The Winter’s Tale, is a play in two parts: one light, pastoral, and filled with loving reconciliation; one dark, tragic, and psychologically brutal. The final movement, Lost Greek Tragedies, explores the Ancient Greek Tragedy as a genre of the lost, with text from playwrights Aristarchus, Critias, Philocles, and more.
Sam Pluta’s Actuate/Resonate starts with electronic drum sounds made with analog synthesizers and creates a tapestry of sound that combines these synthesized tones with their acoustic orchestrations. The larger work is a commentary on attack, sustain, and release, revealing an inner meta-narrative about the nature of acoustic and electronic actuation and resonance.
point, point, point, point is an abstract collection of leitmotifs that introduces Alex Mincek’s opera Chimeras (An Alternate Fiction). It contains many of the musical ideas associated with the characters, environments and concepts found in the opera, but it unfolds in its own manner, out of sequence relative to the opera. In this way it functions both as a prelude and as a sort of operatic suite.
The album will be launched in NYC as part of an evening of world premieres by 2022-23 Wet Ink Artists-In-Residence Ingrid Laubrock, Vicente Atria, and Rick Burkhardt, alongside a new version of Eric Wubbels’s modules/relationships for the full Wet Ink band on Saturday, June 24, 2023 at 8:00 p.m. at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church.
Rick Burkhardt’s DIAL explores conversation — between instruments, between musical ideas, between people and other scavenging animals — using texts by Rick Burkhardt, Edward Lear, and Michel Foucault. An ersatz composer-talkback, dissected with musical tools, functions as the tonal subject of a pantonal investigation.
Ingrid Laubrock writes, “Fight, Flight, Freeze was composed purely from an intuitive standpoint, disregarding harmonic, rhythmic, or formal principles. I aimed to allow the piece to gradually unveil its form to me, similar to the nature of improvisation. The majority of the composed music is written for a piano trio and transitions between active and more static sections. Percussion and electronics, have specific designated openings for their roles, serving as foreign agents, invaders, supporters, or allowing for free improvisational choices.”
Vicente Atria’s En Silueta de aire is a meditative, episodic, and narrative work, drawing upon text from a poem by 20th century Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro called Preludio de Esperanza. Atria writes, “I wanted to write a piece that draws the listener in and has a sense of mystery and unknown, like a riddle or a secret.”
Eric Wubbels’s modules/relationships is a flexible work written for the unique performance practice of the Wet Ink Ensemble and presented here in a new version for the ensemble’s full octet.
Wet Ink Ensemble’s Artist-in-Residence (AIR) program provides an open platform for composer-performers who are invited to create new work for and with Wet Ink, perform with the ensemble, present their own solo projects and bands, and work with Wet Ink’s open, collaborative model in any way that they find meaningful. Wet Ink Ensemble’s three new Artists-in-Residence for 2022-2023 are: Obie award-winning theater artist Rick Burkhardt, composer and drummer Vicente Hansen Atria, and saxophonist and composer Ingrid Laubrock. Previous AIRs include Charmaine Lee, Katherine Young, and Nick Dunston.
Performance Details:
AIR Season Finale / Wet Ink Large Ensemble Album Release
Saturday, June 24, 2023 at 8:00 p.m.
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church | 346 W 20th St. | New York, NY 10011
Tickets: $20 suggested / pay what you can / students free [reserve online or purchase at door]
Ticket Link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/air-season-finale-wet-ink-large-ensemble-album-release-tickets-643158563577Program:
Vicente Atria: En silueta de aire, for Wet Ink Octet (World Premiere)
Rick Burkhardt: DIAL, for Wet Ink Octet (World Premiere)
Ingrid Laubrock: Fight, Flight, Freeze, for Wet Ink Quintet (World Premiere)
Eric Wubbels: modules/relationships, for Wet Ink Octet (2019, rev. 2023)Artists:
Wet Ink Large Ensemble:
Erin Lesser, flutes
Karisa Antonio, oboe
Rane Moore, clarinet
Emmalie Tello, bass clarinet
Nanci Belmont, bassoon
Geoff Deibel, saxophones
Laura Weiner, horn
Gareth Flowers, trumpet
Michael Clayville, trombone
Ian Antonio, percussion
Russell Greenberg, percussion
Jacqui Kerrod, harp
Julia den Boer, piano
Josh Modney, violin
Pala Garcia, violin
Carrie Frey, viola
Mariel Roberts, cello
Greg Chudzik, bass
Sam Pluta, electronics
Kate Soper, voiceEric Wubbels, conductor
About Wet Ink’s 2022-23 Artists-in-Residence
Ingrid Laubrock is an experimental saxophonist and composer, interested in exploring the borders between musical realms and creating multi-layered, dense and often evocative sound worlds. A prolific composer, Laubrock was named a “true visionary” by pianist and The Kennedy Center's artistic director Jason Moran, and a “fully committed saxophonist and visionary" by The New Yorker. Her composition Vogelfrei was nominated 'one of the best 25 Classical tracks of 2018' by The New York Times.She worked with: Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richards Abrams, Dave Douglas, Kenny Wheeler, Jason Moran, Tim Berne, William Parker, Tom Rainey, Mary Halvorson, Kris Davis, Tyshawn Sorey, Craig Taborn, Andy Milne, Luc Ex, Django Bates’ Human Chain, The Continuum Ensemble, Wet Ink and many others.
Awards include the BBC Jazz Award for Innovation in 2004, a Fellowship in Jazz Composition by the Arts Foundation in 2006, the 2009 SWR German Radio Jazz Prize, the 2014 German Record Critics Quarterly Award, Downbeat Annual Critics Poll Rising Star Soprano Saxophone (2015) , Rising Star Tenor Saxophone (2018) and Herb Alpert/Ragdale Prize in Composition 2019.
Ingrid Laubrock has received composing commissions by The Fromm Music Foundation, BBC Glasgow Symphony orchestra, Bang on The Can, Grossman Ensemble, The Shifting Foundation, The Robert D. Bielecki Foundation, The Jerwood Foundation, American Composers Orchestra, Tricentric Foundation, SWR New Jazz Meeting, The Jazz Gallery Commissioning Series, NYSCA, Wet Ink, John Zorn's Stone Commissioning Series and the EOS Orchestra.
She is a recipient of the 2019 Herb Alpert Ragdale Prize in Music Composition and the 2021 Berklee Institute of Gender Justice Women Composers Collection Grant.
Ingrid Laubrock is part time faculty at The New School and Columbia University. Other teaching experiences include improvisation workshops at Towson University, CalArts, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, Baruch College, University of Michigan, University of Newcastle and many others. Laubrock was Improviser in Residence 2012 in the German city Moers. The post is created to introduce creative music into the city throughout the year. As part of this she led a regular improvisation ensemble and taught sound workshops in elementary schools.
Rick Burkhardt is an Obie-award winning composer, performer, playwright, and director whose original music, theater, and text pieces have been performed in over 40 US cities, as well as in Europe, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan. He studied music composition at Harvard University, the University of Illinois, and the University of California, San Diego (primary instructors Chaya Czernowin and Herbert Brün), and playwriting at Brown University (primary instructor Erik Ehn).
Rick Burkhardt’s work has been supported by grants from Chamber Music America, ICElab, New Music USA, Meet the Composer, Jerome Foundation, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Millay Colony, Thomas Nee Commissioning Grant, Boswil Foundation, DAAD, and the US-Mexico Fund for Culture, as well as private and festival commissions. Presenters and commissioners include the Lucerne, Donaueschingen, Wien Modern, and Darmstadt Festivals, American Repertory Theater, New York Theater Workshop, LaMama NYC, PS-122, and ensembles such as Yarn/Wire, International Contemporary Ensemble, Wet Ink, PopeBama, radical2, Ensemble Dal Niente, thingNY, line upon line, Hand/Werk, sfSound, Ensemble SurPlus, the La Jolla Symphony, the Olympia Chamber Orchestra, and Ensemble XII. He has received “Best Play” awards at the San Francisco Fringe Festival and the New York Frigid Festival, and an Obie Special Citation Award for the music-theater work “Three Pianos.”
He is cofounder of the Nonsense Company, a traveling experimental music / theater trio, and of the Prince Myshkins, a traveling satirical folk / cabaret duo. His original songs have been recorded and performed by singers across the US and broadcast nationally on Pacifica Radio's “Democracy Now” and NPR's “Morning Edition.” He lives in Brooklyn.
Vicente Hansen Atria is a Chilean composer and drummer based in New York. His music riffs on a wide range of idioms, from renaissance dances to Korean sanjo, creating lucid, futuristic sonic worlds. He has written for groups such as the Sun Ra Arkestra, JACK Quartet, Wet Ink Ensemble, Yarn/Wire, TAK Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, Bozzini Quartet, Science Ficta, and Daedalus Quartet.
As a drummer and composer, his music has been showcased at a wide variety of venues and festivals, including The Shed, moers Festival, MATA Festival, Re:Sound Festival, Festival Mixtur, ATLÁNTICX Festival, The Stone, Dizzy’s Club at JALC, Saint Vitus, Jazz Standard, DiMenna Center for Classical Music, and Roulette, among others. His music has been released on Carrier Records, Aguirre Records, and Endectomorph Music, and has been reviewed by publications such as The Guardian, The Wire, Nettavisen, I Care If You Listen, Foxy Digitalis, Vinyl District, and Which Sinfonia.
He is a recipient of an ASCAP Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award (2022), an ACF Create award (2021), The Shed Open Call commission (2019), two Chilean Ministry of Culture Fondo de la Música funds (2022 & 2020), and a finalist for the ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award (2016).
He holds a DMA from Columbia University, where he has studied with Fred Lerdahl, Georg Haas, George Lewis, and Zosha Di Castri. Vicente is currently leading experimental chamber folk septet Orlando Furioso, as well as performing with collaborative trio Family Plan, improvising electronic music with Buen Clima as Tronador, and designing instruments with Mat Muntz for The Vex Collection, an alt-historical ensemble.
About Wet Ink Ensemble
The Wet Ink Ensemble is a collective of composers, performers, and improvisers dedicated to adventurous music-making. Named “The Best Classical Music Ensemble of 2018” by The New York Times, Wet Ink’s work is rooted in an ethos of innovation through collaboration, extending from the music and the unique performance practice developed in the “band” atmosphere of Wet Ink’s core ensemble of composer-performers, to projects with a broad range of renowned creators, from Evan Parker to George Lewis to Peter Ablinger, and committed performances of music by young and underrepresented composers, from today’s most promising emerging voices to the next generation of artists.
Hailed for “sublimely exploratory” (The Chicago Reader) and “dense, wild, yet artfully controlled” (The New York Times) performances and “uncompromisingly original music by its members, and unflagging belief in the power of collaboration” (The New Yorker), Wet Ink has been presenting concerts of new music at the highest level in New York City and around the world for over 20 years. Wet Ink’s programming celebrates the nexus of composition, improvisation and interpretation, from early collaborations with Christian Wolff and ZS to pioneering portrait concerts of Peter Ablinger, Mathias Spahlinger, Anthony Braxton, and the AACM composers, work with renowned creative musicians such as Ingrid Laubrock, Peter Evans, Darius Jones, and Katherine Young, and long-term collaborative projects with Wet Ink’s four acclaimed composer-members (Alex Mincek, Sam Pluta, Kate Soper, and Eric Wubbels). In May 2020, the ensemble launched Wet Ink Archive, an online journal of adventurous music featuring writings and recordings by a wide range of artists (please visit at archive.wetink.org).
Wet Ink has been in residence at institutions including Duke University, EMPAC (Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center), Columbia University, the Royal Academy of Music (UK), and The Walden School, among many others, and has been featured on numerous recordings. Highlights include Katharina Rosenberger’s TEXTUREN, which was awarded a German Record Critics Prize, and solo records by Alex Mincek (Torrent), Kate Soper (IPSA DIXIT), Sam Pluta (Broken Symmetries), Eric Wubbels (Duos with Piano, Book 1), and Josh Modney (Engage), all of which were celebrated on various “Best of” lists by The New York Times, The New Yorker, Bandcamp Daily, Sequenza 21, and The Nation. Wet Ink has released four acclaimed solo albums (Wet Ink Ensemble; Relay; Wet Ink: 20, which features the Wet Ink Large Ensemble; and Glossolalia/Lines on Black).
Wet Ink is co-directed by an octet of world class composers, improvisers, and interpreters that collaborate in band-like fashion, writing, improvising, preparing, and touring pieces together over long stretches of time. These directors are Erin Lesser (flutes), Alex Mincek (saxophone), Ian Antonio (percussion), Eric Wubbels (piano), Josh Modney (violin), Mariel Roberts (cello), Kate Soper (voice), and Sam Pluta (electronics). The Wet Ink Large Ensemble is a group of extraordinary New York City musicians that come together to play the world's most exciting and innovative music. Learn more at www.wetink.org.
Missing Scenes Tracklist
1. SAM PLUTA - Actuate/Resonate [12:48]
2. ALEX MINCEK - point, point, point, point [20:26]
3. KATE SOPER - Missing Scenes
I. The Wings of the Dove [8:45]
II. The Winter’s Tale [9:30]
III. Lost Greek Tragedies [9:11]Total Time: 1:00:38
Wet Ink Ensemble - Ian Antonio, Mariel Roberts, Kate Soper, Josh Modney, Erin Lesser, Eric Wubbels, Alex Mincek and Sam Pluta
Wet Ink Large Ensemble:
Erin Lesser, flutes
Karisa Antonio, oboe
Rane Moore, clarinet
Emmalie Tello, bass clarinet (2)
Nanci Belmont, bassoon (2)
Geoff Deibel, saxophones
Laura Weiner, horn
Gareth Flowers, trumpet (2)
Michael Clayville, trombone (2)
Ian Antonio, percussion
Russell Greenberg, percussion
Jacqui Kerrod, harp (1,3)
Julia den Boer, piano
Josh Modney, violin
Pala Garcia, violin
Carrie Frey, viola
Mariel Roberts, cello
Greg Chudzik, bass (2)
Sam Pluta, electronics (1, 3)
Kate Soper, voice (3)
Eric Wubbels, conductorRecorded by Sam Pluta and Levi Lu at The DiMenna Center, NYC in December 2021
Mixed and Produced by Sam Pluta
Mastered by Pierre Alexandre Tremblay
Album Design by Federico Peñalva and Sam Pluta# # #
