CELEBRATING THE ORCHESTRA’S 120 SEASONS OF MUSICAL LEGACY, 25 YEARS AT BENAROYA HALL Bringing New Sounds to Seattle: More Than 35 Living Composers in Season Highlights Contemporary works by Salina Fisher, Nina C. Young, Aaron Jay Kernis, Reena Esmail, Lauri Porra, David Robertson, Steven Mackey, Linda Catlin Smith, Gretchen Yanover, Donghoon Shin, Dorothy Chang, Han …
Take Effect Review: Beautiful Passing
The Grammy Winning composer Steven Mackey brings us a portrait album, where 2 lengthy compositions are led by the conductor David Robertson and were recorded live.
“Mackey ends his piece with an aura that is part Ralph Vaughan Williams, part Led Zeppelin” – San Francisco Classical Voice
After more than two years of development during the COVID pandemic, Treelogy, featuring a trio of nature-themed compositions by Billy Childs, Gabriella Smith, and Steven Mackey, finally had its world premiere Feb. 23 at the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts in Northridge, accompanied by the 16 members of Delirium Musicum. The spark that ignited …
“A double concerto for Mackey on electric guitar, violinist and Delirium leader Etienne Gara and strings, it also reflects on the equally impressive phenomenon of fairy rings” – LA Times
Steve Mackey’s “Red Wood” takes root, so to speak, in the way trees pass life-giving materials underground to sustain the health of the forest. A double concerto for Mackey on electric guitar, violinist and Delirium leader Etienne Gara and strings, it also reflects on the equally impressive phenomenon of fairy rings, the name for the …
“Mackey’s sonic imagination is coupled with a deep mastery of craft” – The Boston Globe
On Thursday night in Symphony Hall, Andris Nelsons returned to the podium with works by Brahms, Shostakovich, and a new ‘Concerto for Curved Space’ by Steven Mackey Only through art, Proust writes, are we released from the confines of our own senses and allowed to look out at the world through another’s perspective, “to possess …
Familiar and Unfamiliar Both Shine
Going into 2023, the Boston Symphony Orchestra had played Brahms’s Fourth Symphony 457 times. You could imagine BSO patrons might have had enough of the piece by now, but for No. 458 on Thursday, under music director Andris Nelsons, Symphony Hall was pretty well filled for a cold, windy January evening. It should be noted …
Concert Review: Boston Symphony Orchestra Plays Shostakovich, Brahms, and Mackey [The Arts fuse]
Under the baton of Andris Nelsons, a listless Boston Symphony Orchestra delivered flat renditions of works by Shostakovich and Brahms. On paper, Thursday night’s Boston Symphony Orchestra concert promised to deliver seismic urgency. But the program proved the old maxim that great music is better than most performances of it. Under the baton of Andris …
Mackey Ponders the Universe in Concerto for Curved Space
In January, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons give the world premiere of Steven Mackey’s Concerto for Curved Space, a work that draws on the composer’s interest in physics and contemplates our perceived reality of the universe. A physics major in college, Mackey has frequently written works that reflect his awe and wonder of the …
GRAMMY-Winning Composer Steven Mackey Releases New Portrait Album of Music for Orchestra, Beautiful Passing
Featuring the Sydney Symphony Orchestra Led by David Robertson in Mackey’s Mnemosyne’s Pool and his Violin Concerto Beautiful Passing with Anthony Marwood On Friday, December 9, 2022, GRAMMY-winning composer Steven Mackey releases a portrait album of his music for violin and orchestra, Beautiful Passing, on Canary Classics. Works include Mackey’s violin concerto Beautiful Passing (2008), …
The New York Times Covers Steven Mackey’s New “Electric Orpheus” Music Video
Steven Mackey is far from the first composer to try his hand at the Orpheus myth, but he may be the first to treat it in what he calls a wordless opera for electric guitar. The piece, “Orpheus Unsung,” which also has a drum part written with Jason Treuting of So Percussion, came to Princeton …