Wet Ink Ensemble (via the WFMU Free Music Archive)
Photo by Peter Gannushkin, DOWNTOWNMUSIC.NET
If Wet Ink Ensemble existed when “uptown” and “downtown” still had meaning, much of their programming would seem to land them decidedly north of 34th St. But like the capital-D Downtown groups, the bread and butter of their programming comes from the ensemble members themselves, with composers such as Alex Mincek, Kate Soper, Eric Wubbels, Sam Pluta, playing vital roles in the group. Lately, inching toward its teenage years, the ensemble has started to program ambitious portrait concerts of underheard-in-America European composers like Peter Ablinger and Matthias Spangler, usually in places like Columbia’s Miller Theater or various cultural centers.
However, Wet Ink always seems to make two or three appearances a year at ISSUE. Tonight, for the annual Darmstadt Institute, Wet Ink Ensemble will play new works by composer, trombonist, early AACM member, and Columbia professor George Lewis, vocalist Kate Soper, and pianist Eric Wubbels, with older works by Rick Burkhardt and Alex Mincek. The tracks below are saxophone & piano duos from the group’s March 2010 concert at ISSUE: “Pendulum III” by saxophonist and Artistic Director Alex Mincek; and “this is this is this is” by pianist and Executive Director Eric Wubbels.
Via the WFMU Free Music Archive.
Ellen Fullman’s Long String Instrument (via the Free Music Archive)
Photo by Judy Dater
In the early 1980s, Ellen Fullman began developing the “Long String Instrument,” stringing tuned piano wire across her Brooklyn studio. In the last thirty years, she has moved this instrument all over the country, and for one day she’ll perform in ISSUE Project Room’s new space at 110 Livingston, in Downtown Brooklyn (May 22: 3 pm & 7 pm: brand-new ISSUE members get two free tickets). It’s been compared to standing inside an enormous grand piano, or “some cyclopean subterranean grotto” (The Wire). She has an upcoming release on Important Records, Through Glass Panes, and the mix below includes a few of these tracks as well as collaborations with the artists she’ll be joined by later this month.
WFMU Free Music Archive and ISSUE Project Room
We’re pretty excited to be working with WFMU on their new and fantastic Free Music Archive to put up some selected excerpts of performances going on here.
The Free Music Archive is a social music website built around a curated library of free, legal audio. Fellow curators include radio stations like KEXP (Seattle) and KBOO (Portland OR), webcasters like DUBLAB (Los Angeles) and Halas Radio (Israel), netlabels (Comfort Stand), and amazing online collectives like CASH Music.
check it out here:
On January 25, ISSUE Project Room will inaugurate its new space at 110 Livingston with Gaudeamus Muziekweek, a four-day festival celebrating groundbreaking and challenging new music by emerging composers from around the world. Working in partnership ...
ISSUE is starting off the New Year with a change of scenery. That's right, Issue Project Room is moving out of our space at the Old American Can Factory and into 110 Livingston in Downtown Brooklyn. We've had a great run at the Can Factory,...