Wet Ink Ensemble Presents Collaborations: Huddersfield Composers with Vocalist Charmaine Lee, December 13

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Katy Salomon | Morahan Arts and Media
katy@morahanartsandmedia.com | 863.660.2214

Wet Ink Ensemble Presents Collaborations: Huddersfield 
Composers with Vocalist Charmaine Lee, December 13

Featuring US Premieres by Charmaine Lee, Bryn Harrison,
Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, Kristina Wolfe, and Eric Wubbels

www.wetink.org
 

New York, NY (November 21, 2019) — On Friday, December 13, 2019 at 8:00 P.M. at St. Peters Church, Chelsea, the "sublimely exploratory” (The Chicago Reader) Wet Ink Ensemble presents a concert of collaborations from the 2019 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, featuring the US premieres of sextets written for Wet Ink by UK-based composers Kristina Wolfe, Bryn Harrison, and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay; NYC-based voice phenom Charmaine Lee; and Wet Ink’s Eric Wubbels. Wet Ink debuted these works at hcmf// in November 2019 and recorded them for release on Huddersfield’s HCR label. The program features the US premieres of Charmaine Lee’s Smoke, Airs (2017 rev. 2019); Bryn Harrison’s Dead Time (2019); Pierre Alexandre Tremblay’s (un)weave (2019), Kristina Wolfe’s A Mere Echo of Aristoxenus (2019), and Eric Wubbels’s modules/relationships (2019); all written for Wet Ink. 

Charmaine Lee will join the ensemble for her work, Smoke, Airs, which merges tightly structured improvisation with Lee’s acrobatic vocal technique, at turns mysterious, playful, and brutal. Kristina Wolfe’s A Mere Echo of Aristoxenus explores the structural, mathematical, and spiritual meanings of sound through the acoustic reconstruction of two lost Ancient Greek sites, as part of Wolfe’s ongoing research in sound and music archaeology. Dead Time, Bryn Harrison’s second chamber composition written for Wet Ink, weaves an intricate texture of micro-repetition with subtle and ever-changing timbral variation, juxtaposed with electronic interruptions that play with one’s perception of time in fascinating and unexpected ways. Pierre Alexandre Tremblay’s (un)weave features a rich palette of live electronics processing and fixed media in a brightly virtuosic ensemble work inspired by a crowded metropolis of independent yet interacting people. Of his new work, Eric Wubbels writes, “modules / relationships is an open-form work that explores continuums between freedom and determinacy, openness and specificity, concrete meaning and abstract expression in sound. The materials in the piece manifest musical relationships, social relationships, and explicitly personal relationships between the instruments and the members of the ensemble, drawing on many years of playing and being together. The piece takes advantage of the unique fluency of the Wet Ink Ensemble in embodying an extremely broad range of musical practices, including virtuosic notated music, electronics, theatrical performance, and improvisation.”

Performance Details
Wet Ink Collaborations: Huddersfield Composers and Charmaine Lee
Friday, December 13, 2019 at 8:00 P.M.
St. Peters Church, Chelsea | 346 W 20th Street | New York, NY
Tickets: $10 general admission, free for students (no pre-order, cash only at the door)
Link: www.wetink.org/pages/events.html

Repertoire:
Charmaine Lee: Smoke, Airs (2017 rev. 2019), for Wet Ink sextet [US Premiere]
Bryn Harrison: Dead Time (2019), for Wet Ink sextet [US Premiere]
Pierre Alexandre Tremblay: (un)weave (2019), for Wet Ink sextet [US Premiere]
Kristina Wolfe: A Mere Echo of Aristoxenus (2019), for Wet Ink sextet [US Premiere]
Eric Wubbels: modules/relationships (2019), for Wet Ink sextet [US Premiere]

Performers:
Wet Ink Ensemble
     Alice Teyssier, flutes/voice
     Alex Mincek, tenor saxophone
     Ian Antonio, percussion
     Eric Wubbels, piano
     Josh Modney, violin
     Sam Pluta, electronics
Charmaine Lee, voice

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 octet 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).

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 three acclaimed solo albums (Wet Ink Ensemble, Relay, and Wet Ink: 20, which features the Wet Ink Large Ensemble), and will release another in April 2020 featuring large-scale works written for the Wet Ink band by Sam Pluta and Alex Mincek.

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. 

# # #