Wet Ink Ensemble to Present World Premieres by Aurora Nealand & Jo Kondo at Roulette
The concert also features Alex Mincek's Assemblage: Trace/Mobile and Jürg Frey's Paysage Pour Gustave Roud.
New York City-based new music collective Wet Ink Ensemble will conclude their 27th concert season with the world premiere of an octet by Aurora Nealand (commissioned through Wet Ink's Artist-In-Residence program), the world premiere of a trio for flute, percussion, and piano written for Wet Ink by Jo Kondo, the NYC premiere of the dectet Assemblage: Trace/Mobile by Wet Ink founding member Alex Mincek, and a performance of Jürg Frey's luminous trio Paysage pour Gustave Roud for clarinet, cello, and piano on Wednesday, June 10, 2026 at 8:00 p.m. at Roulette.
Both world premieres were commissioned by Wet Ink: a trio by Jo Kondo featuring Erin Lesser (flute), Ian Antonio (percussion), and Eric Wubbels (piano); and an octet by Aurora Nealand featuring Nealand as a performer with the Wet Ink Band, representing the culmination of her yearlong artist residency with the ensemble.
Mincek's title provides an intriguing cipher for the intricacy of his 20-minute dectet - Assemblage: a collection of objects made from odds and ends; Trace - to discover by going backward over the evidence step by step; Mobile - changeable in appearance, mood, or purpose. Mincek writes, "The piece is about mobility, malleability, and flexible perspectives. It begins with an austere collection of rhythmic objects, assembled from various combinations of sound and action. The structures, actions, and sounds are then continually recombined, rearranged, and reimagined."
Alex Ross writes, "[Jürg] Frey has created a body of music that is as daring as it is beautiful. Spare to the point of vanishing, his works suspend fragile harmonies above stretches of percussive rustling and spells of silence." The gorgeous, meditative trio presented on tonight's program features Madison Greenstone (clarinet), Mariel Roberts Musa (cello), and Laura Barger (piano).
Wet Ink's Artist-In-Residence (AIR) program provides an open platform for composer-performers who are invited to create new work for/with Wet Ink, perform with the ensemble, present their own solo projects and bands, and work with Wet Ink's open, collaborative model however they find meaningful. Past participants in the AIR program have included Ingrid Laubrock, Ben LaMar Gay, Carolyn Chen, Gelsey Bell, Vicente Atria, Rick Burkhardt, Katherine Young, Nick Dunston, and Charmaine Lee.
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