Steven Mackey b. 1956

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An introduction to Mackey’s music by Paul Lansky

There are a number of people in music today, this writer included, who each think that they deserve unique credit for discovering Steve Mackey. What probably accounts for this paradox is the fact that the qualities of his music – its originality, freshness, dazzling invention, a certain impertinence – strike the listener like an unusual stone discovered on a rock-strewn beach; we are not quite sure where it came from, it really catches the eye, doesn’t quite belong, and seems to stand out in bold distinction from its neighbors. We pick it up, pleased with our discovery, happy that nobody else has noticed it, glad to have walked that way this day. On closer examination we start to marvel at its features. Who would ever have thought to combine these particular qualities – this is not how these things are usually made, but what a good idea for a rock.

The set of qualities that make up Mackey and his music don’t come from the usual places. Steve (even his students call him that) spent his youth on the ski slopes, tennis courts, and ball fields of Marysville in Northern California, becoming a superb athlete. When he wasn’t outside, he was doing his best to ape the riffs of Jimmys Page and Hendrix on his electric guitar. Fate intervened in the form of a torn achilles tendon and The Rite of Spring, at about the same time. As Steve tells it, he was staggered by this music, and by the idea of a being a composer. Quickly changing his major at the University of California at Davis from physics to music, he began to play ‘catch-up ball’, and, as ever, became an all-star at this game too. Graduate study at Stony Brook and Brandeis, and teaching appointments at William and Mary, and Princeton, where he became a Full Professor at the young age of 36, led him into the intense world of contemporary, experimental, and risk-taking music.

As Steve emerged from his apprenticeship, the guitar came back out of his closet, and with it the musical heritage of his childhood, synthesizing a compositional approach that shows the influences of Led Zeppelin, Stravinsky, Monteverdi, Muddy Waters, Mahler, Monk, and others. Steve’s music also began to assert the qualities of a gifted athlete: extroverted, optimistic, enthusiastic. Painstakingly crafting his works with the role of the performer in mind, and probably influenced by the exuberant energy that a rock guitarist needs to project his music to the attending throngs, Steve became, as he tells it, more of a storyteller than a sound sculptor. Pieces such as Deal, Eating Greens, and Banana/Dump Truck exhibit a particular and highly personal concern with the role of the performer in the process, one in which the work to be done extends beyond merely getting the notes right. The musicians become characters in a drama that is at once thrilling, dangerous, exhilarating, and thought provoking. In Deal, for example, Mackey composed a compelling musical environment against which a solo guitarist and drummer improvise, guided by a score of the accompanying ensemble and some general performance indications. The ensemble’s music, which Mackey has described as like a ‘barren urban landscape’ creates a stark yet enveloping world for the musicians to work in, and the result is quite unlike anything else in the field of improvisation. The instrumental ensemble is also accompanied by a simple tape in which we hear the sounds of an unanswered telephone, a dog barking, and some geese flying overhead. The result is at once poignant, passionate, and deeply moving, and captures a feeling of intense longing reminiscent of late Mahler.

In several instances his pieces even challenge the authority of the proscenium, as in the pizza delivery in Eating Greens, or the vaudeville staging of Banana/Dump Truck in which the ‘cellist’s entry and exit bows are accompanied by the continuing music of the orchestra. But these are never gags. Instead they are ways to encourage the listener to adopt a new listening stance and gain a deeper perspective on the relations between how music is heard and what it is trying to say. The pizza delivery, for example, creates a momentary, and rather unusual lull, fracturing the music’s spell. But then the orchestra forcefully resumes, causing the listeners to refocus their attention with renewed vigor. Additionally, Eating Greens reveals the hand of a master orchestrator. The scoring is fluid, inventive, and sparkling, as well as challenging and fun for the players.

In some pieces, such as No Two Breaths and See Ya Thursday, a contemplative side emerges. Extending the athlete metaphor, this is not so much an inward-spiraling contemplation as it is like the state of mind of a competitor preparing for an all-absorbing effort. For its entire span No Two Breaths pulsates with the rhythm of meditative breathing. Another aspect of his music is revealed in works such as Never Sing Before Breakfast and Indigenous Instruments, which explore imaginary landscapes, experimenting with tuning and recorded sounds, creating contexts in which the music seems to be the voice of the inhabitants of a distant world. In all cases the music remains deeply thoughtful, with the sense that a master storyteller is weaving a tale with extraordinary care, skill, and concern for detail and depth.

Putting aside a fancy rhetoric, however, we see 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. But, now that these voices are being heard, we notice that what they are saying is worth hearing. Who’d have ever thought...

Paul Lansky, 1996
(composer; Professor of Music, Princeton University)