et Ink’s new Artist-in-Residence program provides an open platform for invited guest artists to work closely with the ensemble over the course of an entire season – creating new work for and with Wet Ink, performing with the ensemble, presenting their own solo projects and bands, and engaging with Wet Ink’s open, collaborative model in any way they find meaningful.
Process and relationships are at the heart of the work we do as an ensemble, and while we perform music by composers from a broad spectrum of process-traditions, as an ensemble of composer/performers we feel a special kinship with those musicians who are also working to develop and reimagine the composer/performer practice. For the inaugural 2021-2022 season of our Artist-in-Residence Program, Wet Ink is excited to welcome two remarkably wide-ranging musicians, whose practices encompass composition, instrumental performance, improvisation, and electronics: composer, bassist, and improviser Nick Dunston, and composer, bassoonist, and improviser Katherine Young.
Members of Wet Ink have worked together with Nick and Katie over the years in various ensembles and projects, and we're thrilled both to have the chance to spend some more focused time with their musical worlds this year, and to introduce their work to those members of our audience who may not have encountered it yet.
- Eric Wubbels
(Please join us for the first events featuring work by our 2021-22 AIR's, November 17 and 18 at Scholes St. Studio, in Brooklyn.)
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.
NICK DUNSTON is a Berlin-based acoustic and electroacoustic composer, improviser, and bassist. An “indispensable player on the New York avant-garde" (The New York Times), his professional appearances have also spanned a variety of venues and festivals across North America and Europe. He's performed with an array of artists such as Marc Ribot, Ches Smith, Imani Uzuri, Ingrid Laubrock, Tyshawn Sorey, Anna Webber, Amirtha Kidambi, and Vijay Iyer. As a recording artist, he's released 3 albums under his name to much critical acclaim from publications such as The Wire, Downbeat Magazine, and Rolling Stone. As a composer, he has been commissioned by artists such as Bang on a Can, Ex-Aequo, Johnny Gandelsman, T R O M P O, Joanna Mattrey, and Clifton Joey Guidry III. In 2019 he was awarded the Van Lier Fellowship by Roulette Intermedium, which supported the premieres of The Floor is Lava! for double bass quintet and La Operación, a trans-media opera in progress. Other notable projects of his include: Skultura, a Berlin-based electroacoustic quartet; banjer, a solo project for prepared banjo and electronics; and Atlantic Extraction, an internationally-based improvising quintet.
