Wet Ink performs Sam Pluta's "Broken Symmetries" from Sam Pluta on Vimeo.
Rocket Science live at the Moers Festival, May 25, 2012 from Misc K on Vimeo.
About Me:
I split my creative time between improvising on the laptop and writing notes on the page. Because I am an electronics performer and I enjoy collaborating with instrumentalists, much of my work is focused on combining instruments and electronics, mixing their sound worlds into new sonic spaces. Over the years I have also made audio-visual installations and performed my solo audio-visual laptop performances all over the United States and Europe. My most recent audio-visual work was American Idols, an installation for four electric guitars feeding back and 20 televisions.
New York is full of amazing performers, many of whom are my close friends and collaborators. I have been lucky to compose for many of them, including Wet Ink Ensemble, Yarn/Wire, Timetable Percussion, Mivos Quartet, ICE, Dave Eggars, and So Percussion.
Wet Ink Ensemble is an outstanding New York new music group dedicated to playing new music by young composers. Wet Ink has commissioned and premeired nearly 100 works in its 12 year history. I serve as the Technical Director, performing on electronics and doing all things electrical. Recently we have begun touring, performing at Sacramento Festival of New American Music and other places in California, at the Walden School Creative Musicians Retreat in Massachusetts, and at Duke University, where we are ensemble-in-residence for the second year in a row.
Performing over the last couple of years with the Peter Evans Quintet has been an amazing experience. These guys are just incredible performers, and our combination of jazz, noise, and electronics is, as far as I can tell, fairly unique and special. Our album Ghosts was released in 2010 on More is More Records.
Peter and I also perform in a quartet formation with monsters of improv Craig Taborn and Evan Parker. I can't even begin to describe what it feels like to do live processing within this group. All three of these guys have such refined listening and performing skills. It is an honor to work with them.
Over the last seven years I have released a number of albums with some wonderful collaborators. See my "cd releases" page for more info. The most recent are my solo composition album Machine Language, released in October 2012 and Wet Ink's RELAY, released on December 8 2012. Both are released on Carrier Records. My solo album features recordings by Wet Ink Ensemble, Mivos Quartet, Ian Antonio, Jessie Marino, and TimeTable Percussion. The Wet Ink disc also features outstanding compositions by George Lewis, Alex Mincek, Kate Soper, Eric Wubbels, and Rick Burkhardt.
In May 2012 I received my Doctorate from Columbia University. In addition I have Masters degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and BEAST in the UK. I did my undergrad work at Santa Clara University in California. Probably the best education of all, though, has been teaching for the last 12 years at The Walden School, which is my favorite place in the world. They recently named me the John Plude Chair of Computer Musicianship and Academic Dean, which is very exciting. I also teach electronic music and run the electronic music studio at Manhattan School of Music and teach adjunct at Columbia University.
If you like my stuff and want to contact me, please email me at spluta at gmail dot com.