Wet Ink Ensemble Premieres Works By Katherine Young, Rick Burkhardt, Mariel Roberts, Peter Evans, and Eric Wubbels

On Sunday, March 27, 2022 at 5:00pm, the Wet Ink Ensemble appears at the Tenri Cultural Institute for a concert of premieres. The program features a new work by 2021-22 Artist-in-Residence Katherine Young, We are all lichens for bass flute, tenor saxophone, violin, cello, feedback piano, drum kit, and live electronics, in which improvisation permeates the piece as musicians improvise extended passages based on carefully workshopped materials.

The concert also includes the premiere of the full version of Rick Burkhardt's TED for speaking violinist and speaking pianist, in which the musicians deliver a "TED talk" interspersed with otherworldly chant. The Ensemble additionally premieres a new work for solo piccolo by Peter Evans, Message From the Stars, to be performed by Erin Lesser, who will also record the piece for an upcoming album containing solo works for flute and piano by Evans; as well as the first performance of the revised version of Or We Don't Need Light by Mariel Roberts.

The program will conclude with Katherine Young joining Wet Ink for Eric Wubbels' modules/relationships Tenri [3/27/22], which is a flexible work presented in a new version with each performance.

Concert Information

Wet Ink Large Ensemble
Sunday, March 27, 2022 at 5:00pm
Tenri Cultural Institute | 43A W 13th St | New York, NY 10011
Tickets: $10 general admission, free for students
Link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/air-concerts-03-spring-premieres-tickets-269300373667

KATHERINE YOUNG: We are all lichens (2022)
Rick Burkhardt: TED (2013-2022)
MARIEL ROBERTS: Or We Don't Need Light (2021, rev. 2022)
Peter Evans: Message From the Stars (2020)
feat. Erin Lesser
ERIC WUBBELS: modules/relationships Tenri [3/27/22]

Wet Ink Ensemble:
Katherine Young, bassoon
Erin Lesser, flutes
Alex Mincek, tenor saxophone
Ian Antonio, percussion
Eric Wubbels, piano
Josh Modney, violin
Mariel Roberts, cello
Sam Pluta, electronics

Proof of vaccination required (photo of vaccination card OR Excelsior Pass, plus photo ID). Masks must be worn inside the venue at all times.

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 ensemble 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). In May 2020, the ensemble launched Wet Ink Archive, an online journal of adventurous music featuring writings and recordings by a wide range of artists (please visit at archive.wetink.org).

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 four acclaimed solo albums (Wet Ink Ensemble; Relay; Wet Ink: 20, which features the Wet Ink Large Ensemble; and Glossolalia/Lines on Black).

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.

About Katherine Young

Katherine Young's electroacoustic music and sonic art uses expressive noises, curious timbres, and kinetic structures. Relationship building and collaboration is central to her practice. The LAPhil, Chicago Symphony Orchestra's MusicNOW, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Third Coast Percussion, Ensemble Dal Niente, Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, and others have commissioned her music. She has worked closely with Wet Ink, Ensemble Nikel, WasteLAnd, Linda Jankowska, Oliva DePrato, and Yarn/Wire. Her installation work has been commissioned by the University of Chicago's Smart Museum of Art. As a bassoonist and improviser, Katherine amplifies her instrument and employs a flexible electronics setup. She has documented her work on numerous recordings, including her debut with Sam Scranton as Beautifulish (out December 2020 on Shinkoyo) and a duo with Anthony Braxton. She teaches composition, improvisation, and electronic music at Emory University in Atlanta. Katherine is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Music Composition. katherineyoung.info.

About Rick Burkhardt

Rick Burkhardt studied music composition at Harvard University, the University of Illinois, and the University of California, San Diego, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2006. He received an MFA in Playwriting from Brown University in 2016.a??

He has received commissions, grants, and performances from organizations and performers such as the U.S.-Mexico Fund for Culture, the La Jolla Symphony, Ensemble Surplus, the Boswil Foundation, János Négyesy and Päivikki Nykter, Ensemble Ascolta, Red Fish Blue Fish, the NOISE quartet, the past(modern) duo, sfSound, Toca Loca, Mark Menzies, the Olympia Chamber Orchestra, the American Composers Forum, and Ensemble Chronophonie.

He is a founding member of the Nonsense Company, an experimental music / theater trio dedicated to new works and new venues. The Nonsense Company has performed in over 30 US cities, presenting new music and theater in unexpected combinations for a wide range of audiences. Their concert in Darmstadt in 2004 was hailed as "one of the most solid, free, and critical aesthetic propositions... of the festival." Their 2008 performance in NYC's Frigid Theater Festival was reviewed as "the must see show of the festival" and won Best Show and Audience Choice awards.

Along with Alec Duffy, Dave Malloy, and Rachel Chavkin, he received an Obie Award for creating the play "Three Pianos" at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater in 2010. From 2013-2016 he studied Playwriting (Writing for Performance) at Brown University with Erik Ehn. He lives in Brooklyn, NY. www.rickburkhardt.com.

About Mariel Roberts

American cellist Mariel Roberts is widely recognized not just for her virtuosic performances, but as a "fearless explorer" in her field (Chicago Reader). Her ravenous appetite for collaboration and experimentation as an interpreter, improvisor, and composer have helped create a body of work which bridges avant-garde, contemporary, classical, improvised, and traditional music. Roberts is widely recognized for her "technical and interpretive mastery" (I care if you listen) and for performances which seethe with "excruciating intensity" (The Whole Note).

Roberts has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician across four continents, most notably as a member and co-director of the Wet Ink Ensemble (named "The Best Classical Music Ensemble of 2018" by The New York Times), as well as with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Mivos Quartet, Bang on a Can All Stars, and Ensemble Signal. She performs regularly on major stages for new music such as the Lincoln Center Festival (NYC), Wien Modern (Austria), Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), Cervantino Festival (Mexico), Klang Festival (Denmark), Shanghai New Music Week (China), Darmstadt Internationalen Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Germany), and Aldeburgh Music Festival (UK). Roberts has been featured in a wide variety of outstanding recordings, including titles on Innova Records, Albany Records, New World Records, New Amsterdam, Carrier Records, New Focus, and Urtext Records. Roberts' compositions have been performed at venues such as Merkin Hall and Miller Theater in New York City.

Roberts has released two solo albums of new works commissioned for her. The first, "Nonextraneous Sounds" (2012), was noted for its "technical flair and exquisite sensitivity" (Composers Forum). 2017's "Cartography" (2017), solidified Roberts' position as "one of the most adventurous figures on New York's new music scene-one with a thorough grounding in classical tradition but a ravenous appetite for and tireless discipline in new work." (Bandcamp). www.marielroberts.com.

About Peter Evans

Peter Evans is a trumpet player and composer based in New York City since 2003. His primary groups as a leader are the Peter Evans Ensemble and Being & Becoming (with Joel Ross, Nick Jozwiak and Savannah Harris). Evans has been exploring solo trumpet music since 2002 and is widely recognized as a leading voice in the field, having released several recordings over the past decade. He is a member of the cooperative groups Pulverize the Sound (with Mike Pride and Tim Dahl) and Rocket Science (with Evan Parker, Craig Taborn and Sam Pluta) and is constantly experimenting and forming new configurations with like-minded players.

As a composer, he has been commissioned by the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Wet Ink, Yarn/Wire, the Donaueschingen Musiktage Festival, the Jerome Foundation's Emerging Artist Program, and the Doris Duke Foundation. Evans has presented and/or performed his works at major festivals worldwide and tours his own groups extensively.

He has worked with some of the leading figures in contemporary music: John Zorn, Peter Broetzmann, Pauline Oliveros, Brian Ferneyhough, Kanye West, George Lewis, Anthony Braxton, Mary Halvorson, Ambrose Akinmusere, Weasel Walter, Ingrid Laubrock, Jeff "Tain" Watts, Tyshawn Sorey, Jim Black, Ikue Mori, Steve Schick, and performs with both the ICE and Wet Ink. As an interpreter of notated concert music Evans' has performed works by Varese, Xenakis, Bach, Stravinsky, Elliott Carter, Marcos Balter, Agusta Read Thomas, Roscoe Mitchell, and many more.

Evans has been releasing recordings on his own label, More is More, since 2011. 2020 saw the release of the debut recording of Being & Becoming, the complete solo performance from Shenzhen 2019 Into the Silence, Horizons, by the Peter Evans Ensemble and an album of standards with German pianist Samuel Gapp. All of these releases are available here: peterevansmusic.bandcamp.com in digital and in some cases vinyl formats. www.peterevanstrumpet.com.

About Eric Wubbels

Eric Wubbels (b.1980) is a composer and performer. Since 2004 he has been pianist and Co-Director of the Wet Ink Ensemble (NYC), and he performs regularly in projects with Mariel Roberts and Josh Modney, Weston Olencki, and Charmaine Lee, among others.

His music has been presented by LA Phil Green Umbrella series, Huddersfield Festival, ISSUE Project Room, Roulette, Bowerbird, Chicago Symphony MusicNOW, New York Philharmonic CONTACT, Contempuls (Prague), reMusik (St. Petersburg, RU) and Zurich Tage für Neue Musik, among others.

Wubbels has been awarded grants and fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, NYFA, NYSCA, Fromm Foundation, Chamber Music America, ISSUE Project Room, MATA Festival, Barlow Endowment, Jerome Foundation, and Yvar Mikhashoff Trust, and residencies at the MacDowell Colony ('11, '16, '20), Copland House, L'Abri (Geneva), Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and Civitella Ranieri Center (Italy).

As a performer, he has given U.S. and world premieres of works by major figures such as Peter Ablinger, Richard Barrett, Beat Furrer, George Lewis, and Mathias Spahlinger, as well as vital young artists such as Rick Burkhardt, Erin Gee, Bryn Harrison, Clara Iannotta, Darius Jones, Cat Lamb, Ingrid Laubrock, Charmaine Lee, Alex Mincek, Sam Pluta, Katharina Rosenberger, Kate Soper, and Anna Webber.

He has recorded for hatART, Carrier Records, Out of Your Head, Intakt, New Focus, Pi, and quiet design, among others, and has held teaching positions at Amherst College and Oberlin Conservatory. www.wubbelsmusic.com.