Friday, June 10, 2005
Come on, Arlene.
Friday morning I had a little skirmish with my local public radio station, WMAH 90.3 of Biloxi, MS. It was all-request friday; as it is every friday on WMAH.
I decided to make a request, nothing crazy like Carter or Xenakis or Ligeti, just one nice little work. Five Pieces for String Quartet by Anton Webern.
It is one of my favorite pieces.
Perhaps I should have asked for anthrax or a dirty bomb.
WMAH does not play the likes of Webern or Berg or Schoenberg. They do not venture into that crazy realm of 100 year old music.
Request Friday always means....1812 Overture followed by Bolero followed by Chopin as performed by Van Cliburn followed by a piano transcription of an extremely uninteresting orchestral score or film score by Philip Glass and so on....
I am convinced they are trying to drive me crazy.
This is the summer of my discontent.
Apparently the Boston Red Sox have a better chance of winning the Super Bowl than I do of hearing Webern on WMAH.
But things are looking up.
You are all invited to my home in Mississippi for a Hurricane party!
posted by Everette Minchew
11:35 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.
CONTACT INFORMATION
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