Wet Ink: Relay
A brand new review of Wet Ink’s 2013 release, RELAY, on The Sound Projector Magazine.
“The press notes describe Wet Ink Ensemble as ‘pushing the boundaries of new music in New York City’, and for once the hyperbole is something we can all agree with.”
Check it all out HERE.
Kate and Josh performing “Cipher” about two years ago at Issue Project Room
I am very excited that Kate Soper’s “Cipher” for soprano and violin has been published and is now available through Project Schott New York. Now you can order/download the score and view a video performance on the PSNY website. I had the honor of working with Kate for the better part of a year during the compositional process, and am very proud to see the piece taking flight! Looking forward to performing it with Kate this spring at Smith College, and to some more performances in the works for next season.
Wet Ink: Violin and Piano – getting into some music by Burkhardt and Wubbels this week.
Looking forward to a week of amazing projects surrounding Thanksgiving, rehearsing and recording some of my all-time favorite music. Headed to Cambridge on Tuesday for the first part of a class at Harvard where I will be rehearsing and performing a new work, “TED”, by Rick Burkhardt (with Eric Wubbels on piano). The class gives students a view into the process of creating new musical work, a wonderful concept! And this piece is going to be a memorable one – a contemporary violin/piano duet combined with a TED Talk and chanted pseudo-folklore.
After that, honored to be committing Eric Wubbels’ incredible duo for violin and piano to record at Patrick Higgins’ beautiful Future-Past Studios in Hudson, NY. We will be recording to tape in an acoustically impeccable space on a vintage piano over several days. The final product will eventually be released on vinyl on Carrier Records. Can’t wait to get started!
2013 Zürich TFNM: featuring Joshua Modney, Eric Wubbels, and Sam Pluta of Wet Ink Ensemble, plus Rick Burkhardt, Adam Mirza, and Katharina Rosenberger.
I am honored to be part of this year’s Zürich Tage für Neue Musik, performing one of my favorite works by composer-in-residence Sam Pluta, Portraits/Self Portraits for amplified violin and ensemble. The program also includes works by some incredible artists and great friends from NYC! Some details below, plus more at www.tfnm.ch
Ensemble Arc-en-Ciel
Joshua Modney, violin soloist
November 16, 2013 | 6:00pm
Theater Ribiglick
Zürich, Switzerland
Program
Sam Pluta: Selbstportrait mit Peter Ablinger (2011)
Adam Mirza: Partial Knowledge (Situational Ethics) (2010)
Katharina Rosenberger: parcours III (2008/2011)
– – –
Eric Wubbels: beata viscera (2008)
Sam Pluta: Portraits / Self Portraits (2011)
I) Jim Altieri with a Ring Modulator Circuit
II) Peter Evans with Analysis/Resynthesis and other Live-Processing Techniques
Prepping for Wien Modern with Helmut Lachenmann.
Just getting ready to wrap an exciting tour with Mivos Quartet with our final concert in Mannheim, Germany on Wednesday. Last night we performed for the Wien Modern festival to a full house at the Alte Schmiede art space, including works by Ansgar Beste and Helmut Lachenmann, plus a fantastic premiere by Mark Barden, commissioned by Wien Modern on behalf of Mivos. Really excited to repeat Mark’s piece in Mannheim and then again in NYC on December 19th @ DiMenna Center for our Mivos album release concert.
Our tour brought us around the world, with stops in Shanghai (Shanghai Conservatory New Music Week), Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Nagoya, and Kyoto. Amazing to play our repertoire at so many different places, and to be met with such enthusiasm and openness!
Wet Ink: Violin and Piano
Eric and I are performing the piece two more times this season, in Baltimore on March 28 @ An Die Musik, and in NYC on March 30 @ The Stone.
From our October 13, 2012 concert at DiMenna Center in NYC. We were lucky to have an excellent review in the NY Times for this one, linked here.
Wet Ink: Relay
Join us on Saturday to celebrate the release of Wet Ink’s new album Relay, recorded August 2012 at the state-of-the-art EMPAC center in Troy, NY, and including Wet Ink commissions by George Lewis, Rick Burkhardt, Alex Mincek, Eric Wubbels, Sam Pluta, & Kate Soper. The concert will feature large-scale premieres for the Wet Ink Band by Soper and Pluta (more info below), and we’re having a reception afterward to celebrate the album.
Dec 8, 2012, 8pm
DiMenna Center
450 West 37th St
$15/$10 students
SOPER: Voices from the Killing Jar
Spend an evening in the company of seven of history, literature, and myth’s most spellbinding women. Guggenheim Awardee composer and vocalist Kate Soper brings Madame Bovary, Clytemnestra, The Great Gatsby’s Daisy, and others to electrifying life in this monodrama for voice and ensemble.
PLUTA: Broken Symmetries
In Broken Symmetries, improviser, software developer and sound pioneer Sam Pluta combines the sonic world of guitar feedback with the virtuosic performers of the Wet Ink Ensemble’s touring septet. This twenty-five minute, one movement monolith merges epic guitar howls with Joshua Modney’s microtonal violin playing, Erin Lesser and Eric Wubbels’ virtuosic skills on the flute and piano, and the brute force of Ian Antonio on percussion with Alex Mincek on saxophone.
Wet Ink recording Relay at EMPAC
Wet Ink: Relay
The album features work developed over the past two years for the Wet Ink Band by Alex Mincek, Sam Pluta, Eric Wubbels, Kate Soper, Rick Burkhardt, and George Lewis. We had a weeklong residency at EMPAC in Troy, NY this past August to record the music, it was an incredible experience.
Please join us at our CD release concert on December 8 at DiMenna Center to celebrate! The evening will feature a new work for the Band by Sam Pluta, and the premiere of Kate Soper’s huge cycle, Voices from the Killing Jar, which we have been performing piecemeal over the past several seasons and will record for Kate’s first solo album in December.
Happy to have this review of our show at Zebulon! It was a fun set with noise-wall electronics by Patrick Higgins, just intonation violin drones, and general savagery from Alexander Perrelli on drums.
Check out the review here.
JOSH MODNEY 