Wet Ink Ensemble Announces 2019-2020 Season Concerts

The "sublimely exploratory" Wet Ink Ensemble opens its 21st season in 2019-2020 with two performances at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival followed by a performance of the works of Columbia University undergraduate composers in NYC and a collaboration with vocalist Charmaine Lee and UK-based composers Kristina Wolfe, Bryn Harrison, and Pierre Alexandre Tremblay. The Wet Ink Ensemble is also thrilled to announce the official appointment of frequent collaborator, cellist Mariel Roberts, to the group beginning in the 2019-2020 season.

Of her appointment, Mariel Roberts says, "I'm incredibly thrilled and honored to be joining Wet Ink Ensemble, a group which has inspired me and shaped my musical life for many years now. The members of this ensemble are some of my most valued and trusted collaborators, and it is truly a privilege to make music with such exceptionally virtuosic and like-minded artists. I can't wait for the exciting work we will be creating together in the coming seasons!"

Of the 21st season, Wet Ink Executive Director Josh Modney writes, "The 2019-2020 season features the debut of several ambitious projects by Wet Ink band members that celebrate the group's unique performance practice, including the world premiere of a duo for voice and piano by Eric Wubbels, written for voice phenom Charmaine Lee; the world premiere of Kate Soper's opera The Romance of the Rose, co-produced by Peak Performances @ Montclair State (NJ); and the April 2020 release of a new album on Carrier Records of large-scale works for septet by Sam Pluta and Alex Mincek. We are also delighted to welcome our trusted collaborator Mariel Roberts as a co-director and member of the Wet Ink band. We have been fortunate to work with Mariel on solo, chamber, and large ensemble projects for nearly a decade, and are tremendously excited at the ways in which her phenomenal cello playing and extraordinary artistry will inform Wet Ink's next chapter as an octet."

Seattle Symphony presents Dialogues: Kate Soper In Recital on Sunday, November 3, 2019 at 6:00 P.M. at Octave 9. The evening includes Soper's vocal and electronic works that blur boundaries between live and taped voice, instruments and electronics, speaking and singing, performer and audience, and the real and metaphysical worlds featuring composer and electronics performer Sam Pluta. Works include Soper's Dialogue, The Fragments of Parmenides, The Understanding of All Things, and Dialogue II.

On Tuesday, November 19, 2019 at 2:00 P.M. at the 2019 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Wet Ink premieres new works by Huddersfield-based composers Pierre Alexandre Tremblay and Kristina Wolfe, alongside Wet Ink member Sam Pluta. The concert is co-produced by the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and CeReNeM. The program features two world premieres, Pierre Alexandre Tremblay's (un)weave (2019) and Kristina Wolfe's A Mere Echo of Astitoxenus (2019), as well as the UK premiere of Sam Pluta's Lines on Black (2018).

Wet Ink's second concert at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival on Wednesday, November 20, 2019 at 12:00 P.M. features three new works written specially for them. The program includes the world premiere of Smoke, Airs by vocalist and composer Charmaine Lee, a frequent guest collaborator of Wet Ink's and rising star of the New York experimental scene. Lee's exploration of the voice as a tool that can be altered through electronics - rendered differently in new media - has provided us with music like no other. The ensemble will also premiere Dead Time, a stunning new work by Huddersfield composer Bryn Harrison that maps moments in time that are 'neither eventful nor vital' - a rare phenomenon, in our current climate. They complete their stay at the festival by playing a puzzle: the UK premiere of Eric Wubbels' modules/relationships.

On Friday, December 13, 2019 at 8:00 P.M. at St. Peters Church in Chelsea, Wet Ink 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, plus a work by NYC-based voice phenom Charmaine Lee. Wet Ink debuted these works at hcmf// in November 2019 and recorded them for release on Huddersfield's HCR label.

As part of a weeklong celebration of Austrian composer Peter Ablinger's music, Constellation's Frequency Series presents Wet Ink on Sunday, January 19, 2020 at 8:30 P.M. in two works by Ablinger, IEAOV "8 Vitrines, Pigment Dust for percussion and 4-channel electronics and Black Series, alongside a world premiere by Sam Pluta written for a sextet of Wet Ink members.

Wet Ink presents Collaborative Premieres: Wubbels/Lee Duo + Wet Ink on Thursday, February 13, 2020 at 8:00 P.M. at Scholes Street Studio. Wet Ink presents the premiere of Eric Wubbels's duo for voice and piano, written for Charmaine Lee, alongside new work developed collaboratively by Wet Ink.

From April 2-5, 2020, Wet Ink will give the world premiere performances of Kate Soper's The Romance of the Rose, co-produced by Peak Performances at Montclair State University (NJ). Performed by seven singers and the Wet Ink Large Ensemble with live electronics, Soper's The Romance of the Rose mixes medieval and contemporary allegory-along with shrieks, wails, and auto-tuned oration-to dramatize the ways in which love, sex, and music wreak havoc on our sense of self. The two act opera was inspired by Le Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun.

On April 28, 2020, Wet Ink releases its newest album on Carrier Records featuring Alex Mincek's Glossolalia and Sam Pluta's Lines on Black, two long-form works written for the unique performance practice of the Wet Ink Septet, incorporating the band members' affinity for improvisation, just intonation, electronic sound, and fiercely rigorous unison.

On Friday, May 1, 2020 at 8:00 P.M. at St. Peter's Church in Chelsea, Wet Ink will celebrate the release of the Mincek/Pluta Carrier Records album with a concert featuring performances by the Wet Ink Large Ensemble, with NYC premieres by Tonia Koh, Weston Olencki, Sam Pluta, and Alex Mincek.

Wet Ink is in residence with the Harvard Group for New Music Residency in Cambridge, Massachusetts from May 11-16, 2020. On Saturday, May 16, 2020 at Harvard University's Paine Hall, the Wet Ink Large Ensemble performs a program of new works written by HGNM composers.

Wet Ink is the guest ensemble-in-residence for New Music on the Point in Leicester, VT from June 1-11, 2020. Residency activities include a concert featuring music by the Wet Ink composers, plus classes on improvisation and experimental theater.

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