About Wet Ink

The Wet Ink Ensemble is a New York-based new music collective. Our mission is to present innovative programs of contemporary music, with a focus on creating, promoting, and organizing adventurous American music.

With strong ties to several New York arts communities-uptown and downtown new music, pop, jazz, punk rock, electronic music-Wet Ink is able to present engaging programs from the real frontier of new music with a kind of energy and authenticity rarely found elsewhere.

Our artistic vision is to present exceptional music with uncompromising commitment. We believe that exceptional music is being made in many different aesthetic currents, and the diversity of our musical backgrounds gives Wet Ink the versatility to move fluently across a variety of contemporary aesthetics. We typically program artists with the ability to clearly and creatively articulate unique musical ideas, regardless of style, and who might not currently have a platform for their work.

Our repertoire ranges from scores of rigorous notational complexity to indeterminate and improvisational music, from the American experimental tradition to the contemporary European avant-garde, and from acoustic to amplified to electronic works and works for homemade instruments.

Organizational History

Founded in 1998, Wet Ink has presented over 75 concerts featuring a wide range of exceptional artists, both established and emerging. Now entering our 11th season, we have established a reputation for exceptionally committed performances and for programming that is consistently ahead of the curve. Wet Ink has introduced New York audiences to composer such as Richard Barrett, Beat Furrer, Bernhard Lang, and Mathias Spahlinger, as well as promoting major figures of contemporary American music, including Alvin Lucier, Anthony Braxton, and Christian Wolff.

As a consistent advocate for young composers, Wet Ink has commissioned, premiered and recorded works by emerging artists such as James Fei, Brian Kane, Hikari Kiyama, Paula Matthusen, Randy Nordschow, Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, Chiyoko Szlavnics, and Charlie Wilmoth, among others. In addition, we have collaborated with a wide range of exceptional artists, such as Peter Ablinger, Muhal Richard Abrams, Charles Gayle, The Knights, Bernhard Lang, George Lewis, Joe Maneri, David Shea, Timetable Percussion, Weasel Walter, Matthew Welch, Yarn/Wire, and Zs.

In 2009, Wet Ink was the featured ensemble at The Kitchen's retrospective of music by AACM composers, and was praised by New York Times for its "admirable precision". Wet Ink has also performed at the Darmstadt Festival (Germany), the Mannes Festival for Contemporary Performance, and in Summer 2009 will be the resident ensemble at the Walden School's Young Musician's Program, in New Hampshire.

Wet Ink recently released its debut CD on the Carrier Records label, including works by Alex Mincek, Sam Pluta, Jeff Snyder, Kate Soper, and Eric Wubbels. The ensemble is also featured on Quiet Design's compilation "The Language Of," a disc named one of 2008's 10 Best New CD's by NewMusicBox, and which Sequenza 21 called "an essential purchase."