About Alex Mincek

Alex Mincek (born 1975) is a New York-based composer and performer. He studied composition with Tristan Murail and Fred Lerdahl at Columbia University and with Nils Vigeland at the Manhattan School of Music, where he received a Master of Arts. As a performer, he studied saxophone with Richard Oatts at Manhattan School of Music (Bachelor of Arts) and with Bunky Green at the University of North Florida.

Mincek's music has been performed at major music festivals, including Festival Présences of Radio France, Voix Nouvelles at the Abbaye de Royaumont, Festival des Musiques Démesurées, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt (IMD), Contempuls Festival in Prague, and the Ostrava New Music Days.

Mincek has collaborated with groups including the Les Percussions de Strasbourg, Ensemble Cairn, Orchestra of the SEM Ensemble, the Janecek Philharmonic, Talea Ensemble, the Kenners and the JACK Quartet. Mincek's music has also been recognized through commissions and grants from the New Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra-Leipzig, Ensemble XXI in Dijon, Present Music, MATA, the French Ministry of Culture, Meet The Composer, the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, Due East, ASCAP and the National Endowment for the Arts. Mincek is the artistic director of the Wet Ink Ensemble, a group dedicated to experimental contemporary music, which he founded in 1998.

Visit Alex Mincek's website.

The 4.40 Fund

The 4.40 Fund is a commissioning collective that brings people together to support the creation of new work performed by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall and around the world. By contributing just $4.40, you join a community of people of all ages, interests, and incomes, united by a curiosity for new music and the artists who create it.

Project 440 is supported by a leadership gift from Thomas Bishop, with additional major support provided by the Baisley Powell Elebash Fund. Project 440 is a collaboration between Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and WQXR.

Project 440 World Premiere
April 28, 2012 at 7 PM
Stern Auditorium | Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall

More information about Alex Mincek's piece coming soon!

Spotlight on Project 440 composer Alex Mincek

Blog Update from Alex Mincek

Audio samples: String Quartet No. 3: “lift – tilt – filter – split"
Performed by the JACK Quartet

"One of the more salient features of this quartet is the use of what I can best describe as “sonic fields.” A sonic field is a network of musical gestures perceived most immediately as a generalized musical texture. However, over time the listener is able to bounce back and forth from the recognition of the unique parts and the undifferentiated whole. Unlike the use of melody, these fields have very little to do with the representation of language. A sonic field is more analogous to the physical, visual, or tactile. It is like a droplet and the rain, a grain and the sand, a tree and the forest, or any other quasi-fused sum that can be recognized as either one or many. So, instead of expressing narratives with melodies that relate to patterns of speech, or to the grammar and syntax of written language, this piece uses successions of various dynamic textures to represent complex interactions as they relate to shape and movement.

The piece also features many ambiguities in the cause and effect relationship between physical gesture and audible structure. For example, if the player slides a finger the length of the fingerboard while pressing the string, we hear a continuous glissando. However, if the player performs the same physical task, while lightly touching the string instead of pressing it, we hear a discontinuous series of harmonics (there are many other examples). The question that arises is which resulting structure best represents the nature of each physical gesture? By exploring such ambiguities, it is my hope to demonstrate the futility of succinct classification."

To Nowhere from Nowhere
Performed by the Wet Ink ensemble.

To Nowhere From Nowhereis an exploration of the musical space in which pure difference mingles with complex sameness. More specifically, the piece is a catalog of various forms of repetition. Since it is actually impossible to truly repeat anything verbatim, one could also say that the piece is a catalog of various forms of difference.

The piece unfolds as a series of seemingly unrelated musical blocks, some banal and vulgar, others more novel and refined. The goal is the creation of a musical form that so constantly subverts expectation that the arrested flow establishes its own organic continuity. However, some aspects of the piece are more linear, perhaps best represented by the voice's journey from mechanically constrained utterances to humane, free-flowing song.