A NY collective of composers, performers & improvisers dedicated to adventurous music, Wet Ink Ensemble perform saxophonist Alex Mincek's "Glossolalia", an investigation into linguistics through fragmented language; and Sam Pluta's "Lines on Black" written for the individual members of the ensemble in rigorously notated scores, electro-acoustic improvisation, and fixed media composition.
Label: Carrier Records Catalog ID: 048 Squidco Product Code: 29193
Format: CD Condition: New Released: 2020 Country: USA Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold Recorded at the Logan Center, in the University of Chicago, in Chicago, Illinois, by Sam Pluta and Ted Moore.
12. Lines On Black - Saxophone With Piano/Perc Duo 3:01
13. Lines On Black - Cycle 2:20
14. Lines On Black - On/Off 6:39
15. Lines On Black - Canyon 5:30
16.Lines On Black - Solo With Violin 3:22
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descriptions, reviews, &c.
"Wet Ink brings music rooted in an ethos of innovation through collaboration, extending from the repertoire and the unique performance practice developed in the "band" atmosphere of the ensemble's core octet. Praised for its "unflagging belief in the power of collaboration" (The New Yorker), Wet Ink performs ensemble-member Alex Mincek's Glossolalia.
Glossolalia, commonly described as "speaking in tongues," is a term originating from the Greek "glossa," meaning language, and "lalia," meaning "speak." Glossolalia is often characterized by accelerated speech output, with modified accents, comprised of unrecognizable vocal fragments. In Alex Mincek's Glossolalia, the concept of language is broadened to include modes of musical expression beyond linguistics - harmonic language, melodic language, rhythmic language, gestural language, instrumental language, etc - each subjected to the same types of modification (phonological, morphological, syntactic) found in linguistic glossolalia. Mincek describes the piece as "a work intended to help us perceive our own mechanisms of perception, perhaps allowing us a better view of how we view. Nonsense appears in a variety of contexts, including mystical and spiritual traditions in which various forms of gibberish are associated with expanding perception. Spells and incantations composed of nonsensical words suggest access to experiences outside our normal lives."
Sam Pluta's Lines on Black was written as a love letter to the composer/performer/improvisers of the Wet Ink Ensemble. Pluta says, "Each movement of the piece engages the musicianship and personality of individual members or small subsets of the ensemble, resulting in a music whose subject is as much the musicians playing it as it is the larger dialogic arc of the sonic structure. At the same time, the work is a large-scale fusion of all aspects of my compositional practice - rigorously notated scores, electro-acoustic improvisation, and fixed media composition - into a single 40 minute work."
Lines on Black opens with a highly detailed "Duo" between flutist Erin Lesser and violinist Josh Modney. The notation employed allows these two virtuosi to bring all of their new music chops to the work, while also allowing them a certain level of freedom. The result is, while fully notated, a sonic world analogous to that often found in duo improvisation. Following this are two truly improvised movements, a piano solo by Eric Wubbels, who brings his unique harmonic/gestural language to the work, and then an improvised voice and electronics duo that shows soprano Kate Soper as someone as comfortable performing in an open setting as she is in her own highly structured works. In "Saxophone with Piano/Percussion Duo" and "Cycle," a fully notated score for piano and percussion lays the groundwork for an increasingly active duo improvisation between Alex Mincek and Pluta, the culmination of which is an electronics solo over the top of an active ensemble texture. In "On/Off," the music suddenly switches direction, locking into a rigid seven minute hocket, highlighting the virtuosic precision of percussionist Ian Antonio, Josh Modney, and Erin Lesser. "Canyon" is a fixed media movement, composed using sounds created using sounds from an analog synthesizer, with ensemble gestures emerging from the texture. Finally, the work ends with a virtuosic percussion solo performed by Antonio with Modney simultaneously improvising an intricate violin solo on top.
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.
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)."-BWW