Wet Ink Ensemble
Mivos Quartet | Yarn/Wire
Sound American
Apr 26, 2017
Purchase (Bandcamp)

The Best 25 Classical Music Recordings of 2017 (The New York Times)
The Best Albums of 2017 (The Nation)
The Best Contemporary Classical Albums of 2017 (Bandcamp Daily)
Best of 2017: Noteworthy Recordings (The Log Journal)

An album of recent works by Alex Mincek, the first release on Sound American’s portrait series, performed by Wet Ink, Mivos Quartet & Yarn/Wire. Modney is featured on Harmonielehre, a series of duos for violin & piano written for Modney & Eric Wubbels. Modney also performs on all the ensemble pieces on the album, and contributed an interview about Mincek’s work to the liner notes (edited by Nate Wooley).

Praise for Torrent:

“The performers, all long-time artistic partners of Mincek, materialize his instructions with genuine love for what they’re conjuring up… The excellence is incontestable.”
-Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes

“Meticulous, highly structured music disguised as chaos. Atomized and unsettling, this is the sound of our day, performed by members of the Wet Ink ensemble, the Mivos Quartet, and other new-music adventurers.”
-David Hajdu, The Nation

“Torrent, the first release from the new Sound American label—an extension of the excellent online music magazine edited by trumpeter Nate Wooley—is essentially a portrait disc, but it also happens to be illustrative of a growing trend in contemporary music, where being a composer no longer precludes being a performer. Mincek plays saxophone on two extended works where the instrument is featured, and for most of the album he’s working with New York’s Wet Ink Ensemble, a superb group of which he’s a founding member. (In fact, the album also contains six movements from the composer’s “Harmonielehre,” a series of duets composed primarily for his Wet Ink colleagues, pianist Eric Wubbels and violinist Josh Modney).”
-Peter Margasak, Bandcamp Daily

Press Release:

Torrent is being released as a deluxe art object meant to give the listener a multivalent overview of Mincek’s history, aesthetic, and impact on the contemporary music world. The disc comes in a beautiful hardcover book-like case along with 28 pages of notes including the composer’s conversation with Sound American Editor and experimental trumpeter Nate Wooley and in-depth interviews with musicians working closely with Mincek, including Ian Antonio, Eric Wubbels, and Josh Modney.