Sunday, July 24, 2005
Deadlines.
I should be composing right now.
There is a looming deadline for a new chamber piece. It is self imposed, so it's not a "finish it or there's no performance" deadline.
I have found that I work better with some sort of deadline. I have created some of my best works with impending doom lurking overhead. It forces me to stop procrastinating, to quit playing SimCity, or posting on S21.
If there isn't a deadline imposed on the piece, I have found that it will live in composition limbo for ages. I have one of those works that lives in limbo right now.
Perhaps I will finish it one day.
Maybe I will work on it next.
Well I must be off to the trenches.
posted by Everette Minchew
8:17 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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