Ensemble X brings Steven Mackey to campus April 19

Mackey

Steven Mackey is just about the best of a new generation of American composers -- composers who grew up listening to Monteverdi and Stravinsky but also to Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin. These are composers who, now that they are of a certain age, have brought that old electric guitar out of the closet, in this case literally. Ensemble X, conducted by Steven Stucky, presents four of Mackey's works Saturday, April 19, at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall: Ars Moriendi for string quartet; Indigenous Instruments for quintet, including flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano; Feels So Baaad for violin, marimba, guitar and percussion; and Deal, scored for electric guitar and a chamber orchestra of 15. Mackey is the soloist for Deal and performs in Feels So Baaad, as well. A discussion will be held before this free concert, at 7:15 p.m.

Composer Paul Lansky calls Mackey's music "a music that is unlike anything else being written today. Brilliantly executed, uniquely American and accessible to a new group of listeners, Mackey's music comes from places that haven't had much of a voice in the world of concert music." In 1989 the Chicago Sun-Times called Mackey a "super-talented young composer" after a performance of his work by the Kronos Quartet and soprano Dawn Upshaw. Since then, he has continued to lead an active musical life as a composer, guitarist and professor of music at Princeton University.

As a composer, Mackey has been honored with numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lieberson Fellowship and a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. His commissions have included works for the Koussevitzky Foundation at the Library of Congress, the Fromm Foundation, the Concord String Quartet, Kronos Quartet, the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston and for Upshaw. His string quartet Fumeux Fume was a winner in the 1987 Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards, and Indigenous Instruments was selected to represent the United States at the International Composers Rostrum in Paris.

Trained as a classical guitarist, lutenist and electric guitarist, Mackey frequently plays his own music and has toured often with the Kronos Quartet, performing new works for string quartet and electric guitar. His music is recorded on Nonesuch, BMG's Catalyst label, Bridge, CRI and Newport Classics. At Princeton Mackey is co-director of the Composers Ensemble and teaches composition, theory and courses in 20th-century music.