Kate Soper News

Wet Ink Ensemble today released the second edition of its new online journal of adventurous music and conversation, the Wet Ink Archive.

With over sixty total events featuring more than 100 artists over a four month span, National Sawdust's ongoing Digital Discovery Festival is the rarest sort of story in NYC's post-COVID live music world: an unalloyed success.

While acknowledging that the landscape for future performing arts events is currently uncertain, Long Beach Opera is forging ahead with plans for its 2021 a?oeSeason of Solidaritya?? beginning in January. Both LBO and Interim Artistic Advisor Yuval Sharon believe that collaboration and creative thinking will be the key to returning to performing arts activities, and understand that adaptability may be necessary to return to the important work of connecting individuals and communities through live, in-person artistic expression.

Today Wet Ink Ensemble released the first issue of its new, monthly online journal of adventurous music and conversation, the Wet Ink Archive.

On Friday, May 1, 2020, the Wet Ink Ensemble releases Glossolalia/Lines on Black on Carrier Records. The release features two extended works by Ensemble composers Sam Pluta and Alex Mincek: Mincek's Glossolalia and Pluta's Lines on Black. Performer/members of the Wet Ink Ensemble include Erin Lesser, flutes; Josh Modney, violin; Kate Soper, voice; Alex Mincek, saxophone; Eric Wubbels, piano; Ian Antonio, percussion; and Sam Pluta, electronics. 

American Composers Orchestra (ACO) announced two commission awards for emerging composers Paul Novak and Dai Wei. They were chosen from six participants in ACO's 29th Underwood New Music Readings, one of the most coveted opportunities for emerging composers in the United States.

On Friday, May 1, 2020, the Wet Ink Ensemble releases Glossolalia/Lines on Black on Carrier Records. The release features two extended works by Ensemble composers Sam Pluta and Alex Mincek: Mincek's Glossolalia and Pluta's Lines on Black.

Due to COVID-19 precautions and the suspension of most activities on the Montclair State University campus, PEAK is postponing their Spring 2020 presentations.

PEAK Performances presents the world premiere production of Kate Soper's opera The Romance of the Rose, directed by Michael Rau.

See what's on the schedule at National Sawdust in March! Kimbra, Little Kruta, JACK Quartet, Metropolis Ensemble and more...

Constellation's Frequency Series presents the 'sublimely exploratory' (The Chicago Reader) Wet Ink Ensemble on Sunday, January 19, 2020 at 8:30 P.M. in Peter Ablinger + Sam Pluta, part of the Goethe Institute's weeklong celebration of Austrian composer Peter Ablinger's music, Listening With Peter Ablinger. The concert features two works by Ablinger - IEAOV '8 Vitrines, Pigment Dust' for percussion and 4-channel electronics, featuring percussionist Ian Antonio, and Black Series, a collection of rigorously organized open-instrumentation works scored 'for Rock Band' which must be performed from memory - alongside a world premiere by Sam Pluta written for a sextet of Wet Ink.

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.

Ensemble Connect continues its two-year fellowship program this season with concerts at Carnegie Hall and The Juilliard School, as well as residencies and performances at The Pocantico Center of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Skidmore College, and in schools and community venues throughout New York City.

Alarm Will Sound, 'one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene' (The New York Times), returns for its eighth St. Louis Season. The four concerts spread out from November to May include multiple world premieres and see the ensemble not only return to the stage of The Sheldon but also visit two spaces for the first time: The 560 Music Center at Washington University, and The Grandel. Details on the performances are available at alarmwillsound.com/events.

Alarm Will Sound, 'one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene' (The New York Times), returns for its eighth St. Louis Season. The four concerts spread out from November to May include multiple world premieres and see the ensemble not only return to the stage of The Sheldon but also visit two spaces for the first time: The 560 Music Center at Washington University, and The Grandel. Details on the performances are available at alarmwillsound.com/events.

Summer at Lincoln Center is a time-honored New York tradition, bringing people from all walks of life together to experience a multitude of music, dance, and drama across the entire campus. Harnessing Mozart's innovative spirit as its inspiration, the Mostly Mozart Festival (July 10a?"August 10) continues this month with groundbreaking, international, and multidisciplinary productions; acclaimed artists of all genres; introductions to emerging creative voices; and the presentation of new works and ideas.

Alarm Will Sound today announces the release of its latest album The Hunger, out Friday, August 23, 2019 on Nonesuch Records. The Hunger is a riveting modern cantata by renowned contemporary composer Donnacha Dennehy rooted in the emotional, political, and socioeconomic devastation of Ireland's Great Famine (1845-52) and features performances by Alarm Will Sound, soprano Katherine Manley, and sean nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird.

Peak Performances announces its 2019-2020 season, considering the vocabularies of the body, genre and form, artistic practices and legacies, cultures, and language itself-how they persevere, disappear, or shift over time with new influences and perspectives. This season, Peak Performances offers its state-of-the-art platform to artists who work with-and sometimes against-these established vocabularies in the creation of exhilarating new performance works and the reinvigoration of preexisting texts, compositions, and choreographies. All performances take place at the Alexander Kasser Theater (1 Normal Ave, Montclair, NJ 07043).

The pioneering International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) returns to Lincoln Center's 2019 Mostly Mozart Festival for its twelfth consecutive season with three unique programs.

'In equal measures intelligent, playful, ambitious and moving, the program illuminated the shape-shifting power of the human voice.' That intoxicating New York Times review of the inaugural Resonant Bodies Festival in 2013 marked its arrival as an immediately valuable contributor to the city's music scene. The festival has since evolved into something akin to New York Fashion Week for the new music set, offering a chance for buck-the-trendsetters to experience the high-energy epicenter of experimental vocal music. The flagship festival returns to Roulette this September 3-5, kicking off the concert season with three fast-paced nights of vocal luminaries and artistic renegades converging in the best 'see and be seen' creative energy New York has to offer.