Background

DMA, Columbia University

Director, Institute for New Music. Alex Mincek is a composer, performer, and co-director of the New York-based Wet Ink Ensemble. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Alpert Award, and multiple awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His music has also been recognized through commissions and awards from arts institutions such as the French Ministry of Culture, the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, ASCAP, the National Endowment for the Arts, MATA, Radio France, the Barlow Endowment, and the Fromm Music Foundation.

Mincek’s music has been programmed at venues and international festivals including Carnegie Hall, Miller Theatre, Wigmore Hall, Strasbourg Musica, Darmstadt (IMD), Ultraschall Berlin, Festival Archipel Geneve, the Contempuls Festival in Prague, and the Ostrava New Music Days. He has collaborated with ensembles including the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Janacek Philharmonic, Ensemble Recherche, Ensemble Linea, Talea, Dal Niente, Yarn/Wire, Mivos and the JACK Quartet.

Mincek’s compositional thinking is primarily concerned with creating musical contexts in which diverse sound worlds seamlessly coexist – from raw to highly refined timbres, from rhythmic vitality to abrupt stasis, and from mechanical-like repetition to sinuous continuity. By connecting, combining and alternating seemingly disparate states, he attempts to create a sense of interconnectivity that reveals underlying qualities of coherence and unity. His music frequently explores novel approaches to microtonal harmony by integrating methods often regarded as incompatible. Mincek’s musical thinking is also concerned with how the cognition of physical shape, movement and color can be used as a model for organizing musical sound and structure in relation to psychoacoustics and musical perception more generally.

Mincek received his MA from the Manhattan School of Music, where he studied with Nils Vigeland, and his DMA from Columbia University, where he studied with Tristan Murail and Fred Lerdahl.

News

Bienen School warms up winter with a range of new music

January 25, 2024

‘Spring Fanfare’ honors the breadth of all that is Northwestern

May 24, 2023

Bienen School hosts fifth biennial new music conference April 21-23

March 21, 2023

Bienen School announces new music concerts for winter and spring

January 23, 2023

Chicago’s Ear Taxi Festival to showcase Bienen School prominently

September 9, 2021

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Videos

Alex Mincek - Pendulum VII

Contemporary Music Ensemble

Alex Mincek - Chamber Concerto

Contemporary Music Ensemble