Tuesday, April 26, 2005
University of Southern Mississippi bound.



Tomorrow morning I will begin the 12 hour trek to Hattiesburg , Mississippi. I will be attending a couple rehearsals and USM's Integrales New Music Festival. Sunday night is the big concert which will feature two of my works, Hydra for wind Sextet and Figment No. 2 for violin solo. I have been hearing good reports so far about the rehearsals so I am eager to hear the performances.

I will return to Illinois on monday
and I will have pictures to post.
posted by Everette Minchew 10:02 AM

Sunday, April 24, 2005
Trash it all: An Angioplasty for the Composer's Soul

In the past few months, everytime my pen connected with paper it always ended with mediocre results. It was not writer’s block exactly, because I was still composing. I just felt that what I was composing was not very good.

Over the past year, a few people have asked me for new works to which I reluctantly agreed to compose. I began to feel overwhelmed, and I ended up overextending myself.

I compose rather slowly. When writing, I allow myself to live with my compositional decisions for awhile before I decide if the material is worthy of the final product. So my writing process can be very drawn-out.

My compositional “to do list” was growing rapidly. I felt as if I was not composing for myself anymore. I guess I was composing to fill the desires of others instead of myself. I was writing uninteresting music for instrumental combinations that did not appeal to me. I had become extremely bored with what I was creating.

So I wiped the plate clean.

Then I took a while to think about my next undertaking. Now I have a couple new projects on my plate that are built on various ideas that have been lurking around in my head for quite awhile. Since I made the decision to clean house, ideas have flowed freely. It was as if whatever had been clouding my brain and blocking my thought processes had been expelled.
posted by Everette Minchew 9:11 PM

Sunday, April 17, 2005
Impending premieres

The concert for the inaugural year of the Integrales New Music Festival will take place on the night of May 1st at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, MS. I will be the featured composer at the event, and two of my latest works will be premiered. I will be making the trek to Mississippi to go to a few rehearsals and attend the premieres.

The first of my works on the program is Figment No. 2 “Juggler’s Fancy” for violin alone. Every now and then I hear promising remarks from the violinist, Samantha Neal that Juggler’s Fancy is coming along rather well. I am excited about hearing Juggler. When I was asked to compose a work for solo violin it became a little bit of an experiment to see how many of my favorite violin “tricks“ I could use for example, slap pizzicato and constant glissandi (á la Mikka by Xenakis). I confess that I love slap pizzicato; you can never have enough slap pizzicato. Right?

The second work to be performed will be Hydra. It is scored for alto saxophone and wind quintet. (It is actually more of a wind sextet, because it isn’t really a work for alto saxophone solo with wind quintet accompaniment.) I got word, from the conductor Alan Theisen, that tonight was the first rehearsal for Hydra. The performers have had their parts for a few weeks now and tonight they surfaced to rehearse my latest monstrosity. Al acknowledged that Hydra was one of the most aggressive works he has ever heard. I replied with, “Thank you.” The title alone should denote a tinge of hostility or conjure up ideas of aggression.
I guess channeling Xenakis during the composition process worked!

I was assured that the performers of both works are playing very well; some of them even had compliments about Hydra. (I kind of find that hard to believe knowing the conservativism that reigns supreme over the musical tastes of the musicians at USM.) But there are some very good performers at USM and I can not wait to hear all of the music on the Integrales concert.

Other works to be performed at the concert:

Four Songs - Berg (This isn’t really new music, but it is cool and there were performers eager to perform it.)
Sequenza for Flute - Berio (I can’t remember which number it is.)
Sequenza VIIb for Soprano Saxophone - Berio
Sic Mea Fata for a capella choir - Theisen
Variations for two antiphonal saxophone quartets - Ballard

It is going to be a long concert. I think I still forgot to mention a work or two.
It is two weeks until Integrales; I am getting more excited and nervous everyday.
posted by Everette Minchew 10:41 PM

Thursday, April 14, 2005
Eureka! Now I can properly pronounce Gubaidulina.

I have always wondered how to properly pronounce
the names of various composers.
For a long time, I mispronounced Gubaidulina, Rzewski, and György Ligeti.

For Ligeti, I always mispronounced his first name, György.
I argued with one of my professors about the proper pronunciation of Ligeti.
The professor argued that Ligeti is Italian.
"It rhymes with spaghetti," he said.

So if you also have difficulty pronouncing different composer or performer names here is a wonderful website that can help.
posted by Everette Minchew 10:47 AM

Saturday, April 09, 2005
Premiere.

Last night, was the premiere of my Fanfare for Two Alto Saxophones in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the performance.
(It's odd, even though I am 600+ miles away from the performance I became nervous about the premiere as it drew closer.)

Fanfare was performed by two good friends of mine at the University of Southern Mississippi, Katy Etheridge and Terri Adams. I composed Fanfare a few years ago, it began as an exercise in playing around with constructing synthetic scales. I expanded on the exercise and transcribed it for two alto saxophones and voilá ...Fanfare appeared. It is a short work, only a little over three minutes. Fanfare lingered in limbo until a few months ago, when my friend Katy started bugging me for a new work. So I pulled a couple of works out of the abyss that is my desk drawer and told her to play one of them.

I have heard good reviews of last night's performance; now I am eagerly awaiting to receive a recording.
posted by Everette Minchew 3:18 PM


Composer Everette Minchew (born 1977) is consistently active in the creation, performance, and promotion of contemporary music. Moderately prolific, his catalogue includes small chamber pieces for violin, piano, various wind instruments, harpsichord and electronic music. Current commissions include a string trio and an opera based on an 11th-century crusades tale. His earliest musical training came at the age of eleven when he began playing alto saxophone; it wasn’t long until he began his first attempts in composition.

He received a Bachelor’s Degree in Music History from the University of Southern Mississippi, where he studied saxophone under world-renowned soloist, Lawrence Gwozdz.

Fearing that traditional university training would hinder his development as a progressive composer, he abandoned the idea of formal lessons in favor of an intense private study of modern masterworks.

Minchew's works are characterized by their intense timbral explorations and brutal dissonance. That is not to say, however, that the compositions are devoid of beauty. In the first of the Two Brief Pieces, for example, the harpsichord chimes stringent yet haunting chords evoking a sense of loss. Other pieces, like the Figment No. 2 "Juggler's Fancy" play upon the kaleidoscopic interaction between timbres and tones. The rapid alternation of pizzicato, arco bowing, and extreme glissandi remind the listener of Xenakis coupled with a Berio Sequenza. Minchew's Invention "Two-Part Contraption" for piano owes much to Ligeti's etudes and boogie-woogie jazz.

His music has been performed around the United States, and he was the featured composer at the 2005 Intégrales New Music Festival in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
He currently resides in Hattiesburg, Mississippi with his wife, Cheryl.

CONTACT INFORMATION