Steven Mackey

Steven Mackey

Steven Mackey

(This composer has multiple commissions - click here to view all)

Title: No Two Breaths
Commission: 1993
Completed: 1995
Instrumentation: violin, marimba, and percussion quartet
Premiere Location: Miller Theatre, Columbia University
Premiere Ensemble: The Juilliard Percussion Ensemble
Notes:

Title: Journey to Ixtlan
Commission: 1985
Completed: 1986
Instrumentation: chorus and orchestra
Premiere Location: Aspen Music Festival, CO
Premiere Ensemble:
Notes:

Steven Mackey—a Grammy Award winner lauded by Gramophone for his “explosive and ethereal imagination”—is regarded as one of the leading composers of his generation, with compositions ranging from orchestral and chamber music to dance and opera. Born in 1956 to American parents stationed in Frankfurt, Germany, his first musical passion was playing the electric guitar in rock bands based in northern California. He blazed a trail in the 1980s and ‘90s by including the electric guitar and vernacular music influences in his classical concert music. He regularly performs his own work, including three electric guitar concertos and numerous solo and chamber works. He is also active as an improvising musician, and performs regularly with his band Big Farm.

The composer’s numerous honors and awards include a Grammy, several awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award. He has also been the composer-in-residence at major music festivals such as Tanglewood, Aspen and the Holland Festival.

Mackey is currently Professor of Music and former chair of the Department of Music at Princeton University, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1985. Helping to shape the next generation of composers and musicians, he teaches composition, theory, twentieth century music, improvisation, and a variety of special topics. He regularly coaches and conducts new work by student composers, as well as 20th-century classics. He was the recipient of Princeton University’s first Distinguished Teaching Award in 1991.

Commissions

Commission Date

Completion Date