Wet Ink Ensemble Presents Third Annual Mini-Festival

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

Wet Ink Ensemble Presents Third Annual Mini-Festival

Featuring the Works of 2025-2026 Artists-in-Residence 
Aurora Nealand & Ben LaMar Gay, Plus a World Premiere by 
Eric Wubbels and NYC Premiere by Mariel Roberts Musa

www.wetink.org 

November 19, 2025 (New York, NY) — New York City-based new music collective Wet Ink Ensemble presents its third annual Mini-Festival featuring performances and new works by the Ensemble’s Artists-in-Residence Aurora Nealand (saxophone/voice) and Ben LaMar Gay (cornet) on Saturday, December 13, 2025 at 6:00 p.m. & 8:00 p.m. at Benzaquen Hall in the DiMenna Center for Classical Music. 

Alongside works and performances by Wet Ink’s Artists-in-Residence, the festival includes the world premiere of Eric Wubbels's ne owiht (2025), the newest part of Wubbels's ongoing cycle Second Nature, featuring Erin Lesser (flutes) and Ian Antonio (vibraphone), alongside the composer on keyboards, and the NYC premiere of Mariel Roberts Musa’s Jalan Mentari for septet, as well as Peter Ablinger’s Black Series.

Ben LaMar Gay's Lie #4:  Emcee melodies / Maroon messaging systems was commissioned by Wet Ink through the ensemble's AIR program. The work is part of a new chapter of an ongoing series of improvisations and fibs, The Manipulations of Lines and Breff. The composer will join the ensemble on cornet for this 20-minute octet. 

Artist-In-Residence Aurora Nealand will also join the program for a solo performance of her work. Wet Ink will premiere her newly commissioned septet in June 2026.

Ablinger's Black Series from "Augmented Studies" for rock band is an open instrumentation modular work that creates dramatic ensemble juxtapositions using a "graphic audio score". Ablinger, who recently passed away, has been a major artistic influence on Wet Ink's work, and the ensemble would like to honor his memory through this performance.

Written during Roberts Musa's time living in Borneo, East Malaysia, Jalan Mentari draws from field recordings made along the coastal barriers of Kota Kinabalu - structures built to prevent the massive flow of ocean plastic from entering the city’s canals. The piece weaves these recordings of plastic waves colliding with metal into a soundscape that reflects on environmental precarity and human entanglement with waste. The opening fragments borrow from a poem by Omar Musa, whose words trace parallel concerns of ecology, loss, and persistence.

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. 

Performance Details:
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/events/season-27/wet-ink-mini-festival-2025 

Program:
Set 1 (6:00 p.m.)
Aurora Nealand - Solo (NYC Premiere, 2025)
Eric Wubbels - ne owiht [2025], from Second Nature (World Premiere, 2025)

Set 2 (8:00 p.m.)
Ben LaMar Gay - Lie #4:  Emcee melodies / Maroon messaging systems (World Premiere, 2025)
Mariel Roberts Musa - Jalan Mentari (NYC Premiere, 2025)
Peter Ablinger - Black Series (2010-12)

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

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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