Kate Soper's "IPSA DIXIT" Now Available on PSNY

by Ted Gordon on Oct. 12, 2017, 12:41 p.m.

Kate Soper's ambitious and multi-faceted project, IPSA DIXIT ["She, Herself, Said It"] is now available on PSNY. A finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize, IPSA DIXIT is a six-movement chamber music theater work for soprano, flute, violin, and percussion that explores the intersections of music, language, and meaning. In addition to being performed as a full work, each of the movments may be performed as a standalone piece, or in any combination with each other. 

The work was developed by Soper with musicians from the Wet Ink Ensemble during a residency at EMPAC, and later premiered in a fully staged version at Dixon Place. Writing in the New Yorker, Alex Ross calls IPSA DIXIT a "twenty-first century masterpiece", and an example of Soper's unique genre of "philosophy-opera."

Steve Smith reviewed the work's premiere at Dixon Place as "a dazzlingly varied six-part sequence of quartets and duets spanning a stylistic range best described as broad and eclectic, but never unapproachable, employing texts concerning matters of intellect and sentiment, cognition and persuasion, perception and awareness."

Now, in addition to the full score and performance materials, each individual movement of IPSA DIXIT is also available on PSNY: Poetics, Only the Words Themselves Mean What They Say, Rhetoric, The Crito, Metaphysics, and Cipher. 

A complete studio recording of the six movements of IPSA DIXIT is forthcoming, so stay tuned for more news!

Check out video excertps of each movement below. 

Wet Ink Opens 19th Season with Works by Alex Mincek

by Ted Gordon on Sept. 15, 2017, 1:16 p.m.

Wet Ink opens their nineteenth season of performances with a concert that extensively features the work of their current Artistic Director and PSNY composer Alex Mincek. The concert, on September 26th at Scholes Street Studio, celebrates the release of Torrent, Mincek's latest album, which inaugurated Sound American's Young Composer Portrait series. We wrote previously on the blog about this album release, which coincided with a special issue of Sound American entirely dedicated to Mincek's music, including an extensive profile by George Grella. 

Torrent includes recordings of several works performed by members of the Wet Ink Large Ensemble, Yarn/Wire, and the Mivos Quartet. These works were all composed in the past seven years, and include Pendulum VII, which is available from PSNY. Check out an excerpt below: 

To celebrate this new album, Mincek will see the premiere of new pieces from his ongoing Harmonielehre cycle for violin and piano, written specificaly for Wet Ink's Joshua Modney and Eric Wubbels, who will be performing alongside other members of Wet Ink. String Noise, comprised of Conrad Harris and Pauline Kim, will perform Mincek's new violin duo, and experimental trumpeter Nate Wooley will perform works by Anthony Braxton with other musicians from Wet Ink. 

Sound American Releases Alex Mincek Portrait Album "Torrent"

by Ted Gordon on April 20, 2017, 12:20 p.m.

On April 26th, Sound American releases a new album, Torrent, featuring the music of Alex Mincek—the composer's first solo album since 2011's self-titled release on Carrier Records. Torrent collects recordings of several new works for ensemble alongside extensive interviews and wrtitings on Mincek into a 28-page art-object, and is the first of Sound American's "Young Composer Portrait series".

Torrent includes recordings of several works performed by members of the Wet Ink Large Ensemble, Yarn/Wire, and the Mivos Quartet. These works were all composed in the past seven years, and include Pendulum VII, which is available from PSNY. Check out an excerpt below: 

In a special issue devoted to the music of Alex Mincek, Sound American offers several interviews between Mincek, the Wet Ink ensemble, Nate Wooley, and Jeremiah Cymerman. On the works collected and recorded on Torrent, Eric Wubbels notes:

"Each piece is a balance between objects and ideas that have been thoroughly tested and developed in previous pieces and new, exploratory, or experimental ideas (sounds, objects, forms). In any given piece, if the new ideas work well, they might find their way into the next piece, and so on... As a result, I see a kind of slow evolution and refreshing of the musical language within a style that maintains a strong profile and internal consistency."

For more critical analysis of Mincek's recent work, check out George Grella's long-form article on Mincek in Music and Literature, which describes him as "on the outside, looking out."