Thursday, June 16, 2005
Lamentations
Everyday I get online and check my email along with various music sites. One of my frequent stops is Andante.com, but over the past week they have been the bearer of bad news. First they told me about the death of Seigfried Palm. He was an amazing cellist who commissioned extraordinary new works. Several years ago when I began to take interest in new music I heard a cello recital in college that featured a performance of Penderecki's Capriccio for Seigfried Palm. I was amazed to discover that composers were creating such racket. I loved the piece. It was wild and exciting. So then I set out on a trek to find out who this Seigfried Palm person was. I was able to hear a few recordings and I was hooked from then on.
Now in the last day or so I find out about the deaths of Carlo Maria Guilini and David Diamond. I discovered Guilini during my conducting classes. He was great. He didn't conduct the new music I like, but he was amazing with Mozart, Schubert and Brahms.
My first encounter with David Diamond, I think, was a recording that contained his 2nd and 4th symphonies and concerto for small orchestra. I noticed he was a terrific composer who was receiving less and less attention, which is a shame. Let the memorial concerts begin. More people should be exposed to his music.
There have been a number of musicians and composers that I admire who have passed away in recent years. In 2001, I took the news of the death of Xenakis rather hard. Then last year when Berio passed away there was another great loss in the musical world.
Sometimes I get kind of down hearing news of the passing of musicians I admire, but then there are musicians like fellow blogger Brian Sacawa and cellist Matt Haimovitz who are waiting to be heard. So now everyone should be poised to see the next wave of artists who are willing to step up to the plate and fill the voids left behind. This is what makes new music so exciting, there is always something else just waiting to be heard.
posted by Everette Minchew
4:39 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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