Steven Mackey
was 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 later discovered concert music and has
composed for orchestras, chamber ensembles, dance and opera. He
regularly performs his own work, including two electric guitar
concertos as well as numerous solo and chamber works and is also active
as an improvising musician.
As a composer, Mackey has been
honored with numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a
Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy and Institute of
Arts and Letters, two awards from the Kennedy Center for the Performing
Arts, the Stoeger Prize for Chamber Music by the Chamber Music Society
of Lincoln Center and in 2000 the Miami performing arts center
acknowledged his contributions to orchestral music with a special
career achievement award. His Indigenous Instruments was selected to
represent the U.S. at the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris
in 1990. Mackey was in residence at Tanglewood in the summer of 2006
and will be co-composer in residence with Christopher Rouse at the 2007
Aspen Music Festival. He has, in the past, been composer-in-residence
at numerous universities and festivals including Yellow Barn, Imagine
Festival, Bennington and others. He was featured at the 2000 American
Mavericks Festival presented by the San Francisco Symphony and the 2003
Holland festival in Amsterdam. Zankel at Carnegie Hall presented a
portrait concert of his work on their "Making Music" series in 2006.
Among
his commissions are works for the Chicago and San Francisco Symphonies,
the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Kronos Quartet, the Koussevitzky
Music Foundation in the Library of Congress, the Fromm Foundation, the
Brentano String Quartet, the Borromeo String Quartet, Fred Sherry, Dawn
Upshaw, the Dutch Radio Symphony, the Saint Louis Symphony, Scottish
Chamber Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic, Leila Josefowicz and many
others. Recent premieres include Animal Vegetable Mineral (chamber
version) with the Prism Saxophone Quartet at Symphony Space in New York
City (2004), and Animal Vegetable Mineral (orchestral version), with
the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and Prism Quartet in October 2005,
Time Release, written for timpani and orchestra with percussionist
Colin Currie, and Turn the Key, which the New World Symphony premiered
with Michael Tilson Thomas in October 6, 2006, as part of the
inauguration weekend of the much anticipated Carnival Center for the
Performing Arts in Miami, Florida.
Upcoming projects include a
newly commissioned 8-guitar piece for the inauguration of the new
concert hall at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in January
2007, with Hsin-Yun Huang. In March of 2007 he will be featured as
guitarist with the American Composers Orchestra performing his work
Deal, and in May, Dreamhouse will receive its US premiere in Boston,
performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, conducted by Gil
Rose. He is also working on a violin concerto for Leila Josefowicz.
His
monodrama – Ravenshead – for Tenor/actor (Rinde Eckert) and
electro-acoustic band/ensemble (The Paul Dresher Ensemble), has been
performed nearly one hundred times and is available on a min/max CD. In
a year-end wrap up of cultural events, USA today crowned the work the
"Best New Opera of 1998".
Available discs of Mackey’s work
include "Lost and Found": Mackey performing his own solo electric
guitar music, released by Bridge records in 1996; "Tuck and Roll":
Michael Tilson Thomas conducts orchestral music of Steven Mackey,
released in 2001 by BMG/RCA Red Seal; "String Theory": string Quartets
and string quartets plus with the Brentano String Quartet released in
2003 on Albany Records; "Heavy Light": Mosaic plays mixed chamber
ensemble music, released in 2004 by New World Records; "Banana/Dump
Truck: concerti for cello and electric guitar released in 2005 on
Albany records and "Interior Design": featuring Curtis Macomber in
several violin works. "Tuck and Roll," "Interior Deisgn" and "Lost and
Found" all made several year-end top ten lists including the New York
Times. Individual pieces are included on numerous collections on
Nonesuch, BMG/Catalyst, CRI, Newport Classics, and many other labels.
As
a guitarist he has performed his own music with the Kronos Quartet, the
Arditti Quartet, Brentano Quartet, New World Symphony, Dutch Radio
Symphony, The London Sinfonietta, Nexttime Ensemble (Parma), Psappha
(Manchester), Joey Baron, Fred Sherry and others.
Mackey is
currently Professor of Music at Princeton University where he has been
a member of the faculty since 1985. He teaches composition, theory,
twentieth century music, improvisation and a variety of special topics.
As co-director of the Composers Ensemble at Princeton he coaches and
conducts new work by student composers as well as twentieth century
classics. In 1991, he was awarded the first-ever Distinguished Teaching
Award from Princeton University.
Steven Mackey is published by Boosey & Hawkes. | Rinde Eckert, finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Drama, is a writer, composer, performer and director. His Opera / New Music Theatre productions have toured throughout America, and to major festivals in Europe and Asia.
His career began as a writer/performer in the 1980’s, writing librettos for Paul Dresher (Pioneer, Power Failure, Slow Fire, Ravenshead). Working subsequently with choreographers Margaret Jenkins and Sarah Shelton Mann, Eckert began composing dance scores, including the evening-length Woman, Window, Square for The Margaret Jenkins Dance Company. With The Gardening of Thomas D, his 1992 homage to Dante which was performed on tour in the United States and France, Rinde Eckert began composing and performing his own music/theater pieces. His staged works for solo performer include An Idiot Divine, Romeo Sierra Tango and Quit This House. He wrote Shoot the Moving Things and Four Songs Lost in a Wall for radio. Recent writing credits include Horizon (2007-08 Drama Desk Nominations: Best Play and Best Director, Lucille Lortel Award: "Unique Theatrical Experience"); Orpheus X (Pulitzer Prize nomination); Highway Ulysses and Four Songs Lost in a Wall (The American Academy of Arts and Letters 2005 Marc Blitzstein Award); And God Created Great Whales (OBIE Award: Best Performance, Drama Desk Nomination: "Unique Theatrical Experience"); and the two, one-act plays An Idiot Divine.
Eckert’s work for the theater has been produced by American Repertory Theatre, The Foundry Theatre, Center Stage in Baltimore, Culture Project, Dobama Theatre Company and Berkeley Repertory Theater; his work has been directed by David Schweizer Tony Taccone, Robert Woodruff, Richard ET White and Ellen McLaughlin. Rinde has directed his own and others’ plays and operas for The Asia Society, Juggernaut Theater, Opera Piccola and the Paul Dresher Ensemble.
Current music projects include directing virtuoso percussionist Steven Schick in an evening-length solo-theater work composed/produced by Paul Dresher which debuts in March 2009. Eckert also wrote the text and directed the ensemble Zeitgeist in Sound Stage with Dresher. Eckert and composer Steve Mackey are creating, writing and will perform with the new music ensemble eighth blackbird in the concert-length music/theater work Slide, debuting in June 2009. Eckert wrote text and sang in Mackey’s oratorio Dream House, and the two musicians are members of BIG FARM, the 4-person ‘prog-rock’ band. Rinde Eckert’s uniquely eclectic music is available on the Intuition label in Germany and through Songline/Tonefield Productions. The critically acclaimed Sandhills Reunion (music by Jerry Granelli, text by Eckert) was released in 2005.
Following his success teaching a course in creativity at Princeton University in 2007, Eckert begins a 3-year residency in Spring 2009. He was the 2008 Granada Artist-in-Residence at the University of California at Davis Department of Theater and Dance where he wrote and directed Fate and Spinoza, and is currently in partnership with the University of Iowa to create, direct and perform in Eye Piece, a play exploring the loss of vision. Rinde Eckert lives in New York with his wife, Ellen McLaughlin, the playwright and actress.
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