Everette Minchew

Boosey and Hawkes has posted these two video interviews of Elliott Carter talking about his life.

Carter on Carter: The Early Years

Carter on Cater 2: Symphony and Opera

Red Ted Films produced this video. they have produced videos of some of the finest performers and composers of our time. Check out some of their work here in their online screening room.

In February I had the opportunity to hear two great performances in the Hattiesburg, MS area.

The first one, was down the road in Laurel, Mississippi (hometown of the amazing Leontyne Price) at the First-Trinity Presbyterian Church. The concert consisted of the Durufle Requiem and the Gloria by Francis Poulenc. It had been ages since I had listened to the Requiem. I came to the piece early in my undergrad years and had listened to it many times, but I had not heard it in years. My musical ears and tastes have changed since I first heard the work. The performance was wonderful other than a couple late entrances. My wife loved the piece, I still liked it but not with the same fervor I did years ago.

Until I attended this performance I do not recall ever listening to the Gloria by Poulenc. I was pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed it. The performance was excellent. Maryann Kyle was the soprano soloist and she did an amazing job! It was great to hear a local church choir perform these wonderful 20th century works. Not only was First Trinity Presbyterian a beautiful setting with wonderful acoustics for this concert, it was also one of the best concerts I have attended in a while.

The other performance I attended in February was the Integrales New Music Festival at the University of Southern Mississippi. This year, the festival celebrated the Elliott Carter Centenary. There were lectures given by S21 blogger Alan Theisen, Jonathan Bernard, and David Shiff. The concert featured performances by students, faculty and the incomparable Ann Schein.

The concert included a performance of Birthday Flourish. I had never heard the piece, and I am not aware of a recording. It was an exciting performance by USM students. The highlight of the concert came with the Piano Sonata performed by Ann Schein. I have always been a fan of the Piano Sonata, since the first time I listened to the work. I swear I have listened to the piece a thousand times. (Both the Charles Rosen performance and Paul Jacobs.) I was moved to tears. The Piano Sonata is a beast. It always surprises me when I hear it. (Also this was the first live performance of this work I had attended.) There is always something new to find and hear in the piece. (I also highly recommend Ms. Shcein’s recording of Carter and Copland.)

I had a couple of friends in attendance that knew very little of Carter’s music and were kind of weary to listen to his works. After this concert they were extremely eager to hear more. They were even asking people for their favorite Carter recordings.

I was recently asked by trombonist Steve Parker to write a short solo piece for trombone. Hear Steve on myspace here. He is a fine trombonist and is working on a commissioning project that explores the link between language and music.

The poem “The Creations of Sound” by Wallace Stevens became the inspiration for the piece.

A couple lines in the poem sparked my imagination:

They do not make the visible a little hard
To see nor, reverberating, eke out the mind
Or peculiar horns, themselves eked out
By the spontaneous particulars of sound.

I composed the piece in eleven small parts that can be played in any order. Each section became a (kind of) variation on the previous one. I liked the idea of writing a piece in mobile form. The piece is roughly two and a half minutes in length, and the title, speech/unspoken, comes from the last lines o the poem:

We say ourselves in syllables that rise
From the floor, rising in speech we do not speak.

On a side note, right before I started composing this piece my computer died. Since I was without my notation software I composed the entire piece using the melody composer on my cell phone. (mobile form….get it!)

Tonight, Steve will be performing speech/unspoken along with other works from this commissioning project at the Steinway Gallery in Anchorage, Alaska.

Recently, I have been listening to a lot of music at work on Pandora.com.
Pandora allows you to create your own radio stations by typing in the name of a song, artist, or composer. Then Pandora will compile a station full of music that shares the same qualities. Pandora is a result of what is called the Music Genome Project.

Today, I have listened to the music of Beck, Amy Winehouse, Birtwistle, Stockhausen and Xenakis. Amazingly, I have managed to listen to the music of the latter three with out being harmed by co-workers.

2008 brought something new to Mississippi Public Broadcasting: HDRadio.

I had no idea HDRadio existed. I know more about it now, but I have yet to see an HDRadio on sale in any store.

The new year brought a change in their normal format. More talk shows, news programming, and less music. With an addition of an HD channel they have created a new station of just music programming.

And get this…..they have a show titled Modern Classical airing on Saturdays which I have managed to listen online a couple times. There is a new classical music director and she really seems to be attempting to change the Muzak feel of MPB.

I did start laughing when I listened to the first show and she said, “Every episode of Modern Classical will feature at least one work of a living composer!” That episode started off with Satie’s Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear and I thought “Oh, this is going to be the greatest classical hits of the early 20th century.”

The second episode did surprise me when it included Zippo Songs by Phil Kline. It is a very interesting piece and I was amazed to here it coming from MPB radio.

Here is a list of works I have heard so far on Modern Classical:

Milhaud – La Creation du Monde
Rodrigo – Five Childrens Pieces
Phil Kline – Zippo Songs
Bartok – Violin Rhapsody No. 1
Holst – Mars
Eric Satie – Three Pieces in the Shape of a Pear
Morton Feldman – Rothko Chapel mvts 4 & 5
Prokofiev – Classical Symphony
Webern – Six Pieces for Orchestra op. 6
Bret Dietz – I think it was a piece for two marimbas…sorry.

I haven’t heard any Xenakis yet. Perhaps it’s coming?
Slowly acclimating the listeners to the new stuff I guess.

I recently finished my first instrumental work since Hurricane Katrina passed through these parts. It is a short solo work for clarinet titled, No Way.

The initial seed of No Way was planted into my brain earlier this year when Al Theisen and I were talking about writing a new work based off of one of our older pieces where each bar of the new work was a variation off of that bar in the previous piece. Something about that idea just stuck with me. A couple of months later I heard a performance by the USM clarinet professor Gregory Oakes, at the Integrales New Music Festival in March, of a work by Ken Ueno titled, I screamed at the sea until nodes swelled up, then my voice became the resonant noise of the sea for amplified clarinet. That’s when I really started to churn around ideas for a clarinet piece.

Around June, I decided that the bar by bar variation idea using one of my old works could be successful for clarinet. The work I chose was for saxophone, and it was the first work I composed for that instrument. I have a little bit of a soft spot for that piece for that reason. The work was a serialist piece titled, Improvisation, which really wasn’t very improvisatory, but that was the name I branded it with. It has now seen a second life (a successful life, I hope) as a work for solo clarinet.

Since completing No Way, I have had a whirlwind of new ideas, and now I am working on a piece for pierrot ensemble plus percussion titled, Ice Nine. We will see how that goes. It has been fun so far.

Elliott Carter – Boston Conerto
Symphony of Three Orchestras
Charles Ives – Three Places in New England
Symphony No. 2
Conlon Nancarrow – Piece No. 2 for small orchestra
Ezra Sims – String Quartet No. 2

Recently, I had the pleasure of participating in a masterclass given by the Rome Prize winner, Ken Ueno. The masterclass was part of the two day Integrales New Music Festival at the University of Southern Mississippi. My flute work, Figment No. 3 “Euterpe”, was given a wonderful performance by the USM faculty member, Danilo Mezzadri.

Ueno had only encouraging words about my music. And later on. after his jet lag had waned and we feasted on good creole food/beer we hung out and talked music for much too long. I think he may have been surprised to find a group of die hard new music fans in south Mississippi, especially at a university where new music has been frowned on for much too long. That is starting to change though. I wouldhope so after hearing Ken Ueno perform a twenty minute piece for throat/overtone singer and MAX/MSP.

By the way, Ueno has the coolest bio pic.

Recent Play list:

Ken Ueno – Kaze-no-Oka
Beat Furrer – Fama
Salvatore Sciarrino – Piano Sonati #2-5
Philippe Hurel – Pour Luigi
Iannis Xenakis – Kuillenn
Helmut Lachenmann – String Quartet #2 “Riegen seliger Geister” (Thanks, Jacob!)
Bjork – Earth Invaders (in eager anticipation of her Volta.)