Alex Mincek is a New York-based composer and performer. His music is typically characterized by elements of timbral and dynamic extremes and also explores ways in which various forms of repetition affect our sense of time, memory and perception of difference.
Mincek’s music has been programmed by major music festivals such as the Royaumont Voix Nouvelles and Musiques Demesurees festivals in France, the Darmstadt and Magdeburg music festivals in Germany, the Ostrava New Music Days festival in the Czech Republic and the World Music Institute’s Interpretations series in New York City. Mincek has collaborated with groups including the Ensemble Cairn, the Orchestra of the SEM Ensemble, the Janecek Philharmonic, the Second Instrumental Unit, Red Light, TACTUS, the Vega String Quartet, Zs and the Scarborough Trio. Mincek’s music has also been recognized through commissions and grants from the New Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra Leipzig, Ensemble XXI, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, MATA, Meet The Composer, the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, Due East and Present Music.
Mincek studied saxophone and clarinet with Bunky Green and Richard Oatts. He has studied composition with Tristan Murail, Fred Lerdahl, Nils Vigeland and Sebastian Currier. Mincek holds a bachelor’s degree in performance and a master’s degree in composition from the Manhattan School of Music and is currently a doctoral candidate in composition at Columbia University, where he is also a music history instructor.
Mincek currently composes for and serves as the saxophonist, bass clarinetist and music director of the Wet Ink Ensemble, a group dedicated to experimental contemporary music, which he founded in 1998.