Time Out of Time:
Mina Pariseau on Faith, Art, and Creation
One of my bête noires is the false dichotomy between ancient and modern, where the two are completely disconnected and even alienated. That division keeps contemporary art free floating, bathed in the immediacy of fashion–think the bathos of “guitar Masses”– and ancient art immured behind glass in a museum.
How refreshing, then, is the work of young composer, Mina Pariseau (née Esary), who draws on both ancient and modern techniques for a musical aesthetic that is both authentically modern and informed by artistic heritage.
“Sea and Stars,” for solo cello and electronics, exemplifies this approach. The 2021 work combines elements of the Medieval hymn, “Ave Maris Stella,” with an electronic sound environment. The result is a contemplative, unified experience.
Pariseau, who says she has Gregorian chant “in her blood,” comes by her affinity for both ancient and modern periods honestly. Her father sang in the Schola for the Mass at the parish her family attended, which formed her immediate musical environment. Later in high school, Pariseau was initiated into composition by studying 20thcentury techniques.
Like some other modern composers, Pariseau has found that ancient modes offer alternatives to the “major-minor” binary that has dominated Western music for the last several hundred years (and still is the language of pop music). “It opens up more colors from a harmonic standpoint,” she says.
In 2021, Pariseau participated in the Benedict XVI Institute’s Catholic Sacred Music project. Various composers were assigned texts from the office of the Feast of Corpus Christi. Pariseau’s “Verbum Supernum” splendidly displays her mastery of Renaissance polyphony and fluency with modal scales.
In 2024, Seattle Opera’s Creation Lab, for young composers and librettists, paired Pariseau with librettist Mateo Acuña. The two collaborated on a chamber opera, Blood Dawn of the Inti Sun, for bass-baritone, tenor, flutes, cello, double bass and percussion.
Blood Dawn recounts the Andean myth, “Legend of the Ayar Brothers,” about the founding of the city of Cusco. “I enjoyed exploring the old in a new context,” Pariseau reflects. “It was a wonderful experience and very enriching. Mateo and I were two artists with different philosophical backgrounds talking about big questions of redemption and forgiveness, what happens to families when there’s betrayal and how do you navigate that, is there injustice that comes from a bigger power?”
In 2023, as part of the Benedict XVI Institute’s “A Very Marian Advent Prayer Service,” Pariseau set a poem by Roseann Sullivan to music under the title, “Our Lady Expectant.” (See Sullivan’s description of this at her substack). Californians in San Francisco and the LA region can find live performances of the work in 2025 in November and December.
Luckily for the rest of us, EWTN will broadcast and stream “Our Lady Expectant” on Saturday, December 20, 2025, 4 – 6 p.m. PST.
For Pariseau, faith and creativity are inextricably linked. “Creation for me is a calling – my faith teaches me that I as a person was intentionally created and gifted for a reason, and I believe I have a responsibility to develop and use my talents to the best of my ability, for the glory of God. I believe the act of creation is a beautiful way that we are called to live out our identity as people made in the image of God, the ultimate creator, the perfect artist.”