Monday, February 19, 2007
Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez!

Sunday afternoon my wife and I went to our favorite Mardi Gras parade, which is the St. Pauls Carnival Association Mardi Gras Parade held in Pass Christian, MS. The entire town of Pass Christian was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Pre-Katrina population was just over 6,000 people and around 45,000 usually attended their annual Mardi Gras parade. This once gorgeous little coastal town is still in the terribly slow process of rebuilding. The parade and the crowds are smaller than before, but the carnival season spirit was still big as ever.

We managed to catch a ton of beads (without baring our chests or even seeing any bared chests) a moon pie or two and a few doubloons.
Here are a few pics for those of you still digging your way out of snow and cannot make it south for the festivities.


King Christiana

one of the cooler floats.
another cool float.

If you turn around you get this wonderful view of the beach and the Mississippi Sound. The beach is still closed due to Hurricane cleanup.


Clowns leaving after the parade.











Mardi Gras is more than just a day of frivolity and libations. Our carnival season begins about four weeks before Fat Tuesday. In larger cities like Mobile and New Orleans there are parades almost nightly up to the culmination of the celebration on Fat Tuesday.
posted by Everette Minchew 1:47 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.

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