Wet Ink Ensemble Announces 2025-2026 Season

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Leah Rankin | Morahan Arts and Media
leah@morahanartsandmedia.com | 646-378-9386

Wet Ink Ensemble Announces 2025-2026 Season

Season Opening Concert Features Eric Wubble’s Chimeric Form
and Clarinetist Madison Greenstone; 
Third Annual Mini-Festival Highlights the Works of
Artists-in-Residence Aurora Nealand & Ben LaMar Gay; 
Plus the World Premiere of a New Work for Big Band by Sam Pluta

www.wetink.org 

August 26, 2025 (New York, NY) — New York City-based new music collective Wet Ink Ensemble announces its 27th season with the return of its annual Mini-Festival featuring performances and new works by the Ensemble’s Artists-in-Residence Aurora Nealand and Ben LaMar Gay. Wet Ink performs Eric Wubbels’s Chimeric Form and the world premiere of a new work for big band by Sam Pluta. The season also features collaborations with clarinetist Madison Greenstone and saxophonist Anna Webber. 

Wet Ink kicks off the new season with a performance of Eric Wubbels's Chimeric Form on Saturday, October 11, 2025 at 8:00 p.m. at the Tenri Cultural Institute. Following Brahms’s and Ligeti's path-breaking entries in the rarely attempted genre of the horn trio, Chimeric Form treats the bizarre and acoustically ungainly combination of violin, French horn, and piano as a hybrid meta-instrument navigating a chaotic, polyglot, spliced-up, and semi-self-aware formal structure. The work, performed with Eric Wubbels on piano, is preceded by clarinetist and improviser Madison Greenstone (of TAK Ensemble), who performs new solo material as a follow-up to their acclaimed 2023 release, Resonance Studies in Ecstatic Consciousness. 

In December, Wet Ink presents its third annual Mini-Festival on Saturday, December 13, 2025 at 6:00 p.m. & 8:00 p.m. at Benzaquen Hall in the DiMenna Center for Classical Music. Featuring works and performances by Wet Ink’s Artists-In-Residence Aurora Nealand (saxophone/voice) and Ben LaMar Gay (cornet), the festival includes the NYC premieres of Alex Mincek’s Assemblage - Trace/Mobile and Ensemble member Mariel Roberts Musa’s Jalan Mentari, as well as Peter Ablinger’s Black Series.

In the new year, Wet Ink performs the world premiere of a new work for big band by Sam Pluta on Thursday, February 12, 2026, at 8:00 p.m. at Cary Hall at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music. Featuring Wet Ink Ensemble and an all-star cast of soloists, with materials ranging from orchestrated instrumental soundscapes to aggressive AI-driven noise walls, this new work merges Pluta’s practices of composition, improvisation, and electronics, focusing on the many talents of his co-conspirators to create an hour-long immersive musical experience. The program opens with tenor saxophonist and composer Anna Webber, who will play an opening set.

Performance Details:
Wubbels Chimeric Form / Madison Greenstone
Saturday, October 11, 2025 at 8:00 p.m. 
Tenri Cultural Institute | 43A W 13th St | New York, NY 10011
Tickets: $20 suggested/pay what you can [reserve online or purchase at the door]
Link: https://www.wetink.org/ 

Program:
Madison Greenstone - Solo Clarinet (2025)
Eric Wubbels: Chimeric Form (2023)
     I. 77 mögliche Hauptmotive
     II. TORS-
     III. little tail 

Artists:
Madison Greenstone, clarinet
Josh Modney, violin
Laura Weiner, horn
Eric Wubbels, piano
________________________________________

Wet Ink Mini-Festival 2025
Saturday, December 13, 2025 at 6:00 p.m. & 8:00 p.m. 
Benzaquen Hall, DiMenna Center for Classical Music | 450 W 37th St | New York, NY 10018
Tickets: $20 suggested/pay what you can [reserve online or purchase at the door]
Link: https://www.wetink.org/ 

Program:
Set 1 (6:00 p.m.)
Aurora Nealand Solo
Peter Ablinger - Black Series
Additional works TBA

Set 2 (8:00 p.m.)
Ben LaMar Gay - Feet Lift Dust (World Premiere, 2025)
Alex Mincek - Assemblage - Trace/Mobile (NYC Premiere, 2025)
Mariel Roberts Musa - Jalan Mentari (NYC Premiere, 2025)

Artists:
Aurora Nealand, saxophone/voice
Ben LaMar Gay, cornet
Erin Lesser, flute
Alex Mincek, saxophone
Ian Antonio, percussion
Eric Wubbels, piano
Josh Modney, violin
Mariel Roberts Musa, cello
Sam Pluta, electronics
Additional Guest Artists TBA
________________________________________

Sam Pluta Big Band
Thursday, February 12, 2026, 8:00 p.m.
Cary Hall, DiMenna Center for Classical Music | 450 W 37th St | New York, NY 10018
Tickets: $20 suggested/pay what you can [reserve online or purchase at the door]
Link: https://www.wetink.org/ 

Program:
Anna Webber - Solo Saxophone (2026)
Sam Pluta - New Work for Big Band (World Premiere, 2026)

Artists:
Anna Webber, saxophone
Sam Pluta Big Band:
     Erin Lesser, flutes
     Peter Evans, trumpet
     Ben Lamar Gay, cornet and vocals
     Bonnie Lander, vocals
     Alex Mincek, tenor sax
     Ingrid Laubrock, tenor sax
     John Dierker, tenor sax and bass clarinet
     Eric Wubbels, piano
     Ian Antonio, percussion
     Josh Modney, violin
     Mariel Roberts Musa, cello
     Sam Pluta, electronics and compositions

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.

Image of Wet Ink by Alexander Perrelli

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