Sunday, May 15, 2005
For Tom Myron.
After reading Tom Myron's latest post, I now know that I am not the only one that dreams about meeting composers.
I recently had a dream that I was wandering through a forest in Germany searching for Gyorgy Ligeti's house. (I don’t know why I thought Ligeti lived in the forest.) The forest seemed enchanting like the forests told of in fairy tales.
I found this stone path and followed it to a wonderful little house. Smoke was coming from the chimney and it smelled as if someone was baking goodies. I could hear music from the outside so I walked in. I guess I just invited myself in. (This is the only dream I have had where I am breaking and entering a composer’s home.) A woman greeted me as I walked in. I wandered from room to room looking for Ligeti. I found a vocal ensemble rehearsing a work I have never heard but there was no mistaking that it was the music of Ligeti. It kind of sounded like the Nonsense Madrigals. I walked through more rooms in the house. It was bustling with people; all getting ready for upcoming performances. The house was bursting at the seams with music. I entered another room where Ligeti’s Horn Trio was being rehearsed. I stood there for awhile listening to the musicians.
I never found Ligeti, but it was wonderful walking around in this enchanted house full of wonderful sounds.
posted by Everette Minchew
2:56 PM
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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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