Steven "Steve" Mackey (born February 14, 1956) is an American composer, guitarist, and music educator.
As a musician growing up listening to and performing vernacular American musics as well as classical music, Mackey's compositions are influenced by rock and jazz, though in an avant-garde vein. He favors the electric guitar and frequently performs his own compositions for the instrument, which include a concerto for electric guitar and orchestra (Tuck and Roll) and two works for electric guitar and string quartet (Physical Property and Troubadour Songs). As an electric guitar soloist, he has performed with the Kronos Quartet ( Short Stories ), the Arditti Quartet, New World Symphony, Dutch Radio Symphony, and London Sinfonietta.
Among Mackey's notable awards include 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, and the Stoeger Prize for Chamber Music by The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Miami performing arts center acknowledged his contributions to orchestral music with a special career achievement award, the Koussevitzky Foundation at the Library of Congress, the Fromm Foundation, the 1987 Kennedy Center Friedheim Awards, and was chosen to represent the United States in the International Composers Rostrum in Paris, France. He also served as Composer-in-Residence at the Aspen Music Festival in 1985 among many other residencies such as Yellow barn, Imagine Festival and Bennington. More recently, Mackey was announced Composer in Residence at Tanglewood in the summer of 2006 and was co-composer in residence with Christopher Rouse at the 2007 Aspen Music Festival. [1]
Born in Frankfurt, Germany, 1956 to American parents, Mackey was raised in northern California. He was graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. from the University of California, Davis, followed by an M.A. at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and a Ph.D from Brandeis University. Since 1985 Mackey has served as a professor of music at Princeton University, where he teaches composition, theory, twentieth century music, improvisation, and a variety of special topics. He is also a co-director of the Princeton Composers' Ensemble and in 1991, he was awarded that university's first-ever Distinguished Teaching Award. Mackey's music is published by Boosey & Hawkes. His compositions have been released on the Bridge, BMG/RCA Red Seal, Albany, New World, Nonesuch, BMG/Catalyst, CRI, Min/Max, and Newport Classic labels.
John Paul Corigliano Jr. is an American composer of contemporary classical music. With over 100 compositions, he has won accolades including a Pulitzer Prize, five Grammy Awards, Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, and an Academy Award.
Joan Tower is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by The New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time", her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world. After gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, Sequoia (1981), a tone poem which structurally depicts a giant tree from trunk to needles, she has gone on to compose a variety of instrumental works including Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is something of a response to Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, the Island Prelude, five string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, including her widely performed Petroushskates.
Eleanor Hovda was a composer and dancer from the United States of America. She was born in Duluth, Minnesota and died in Springdale, Arkansas.
Mario Davidovsky was an Argentine-American composer. Born in Argentina, he emigrated in 1960 to the United States, where he lived for the remainder of his life. He is best known for his series of compositions called Synchronisms, which in live performance incorporate both acoustic instruments and electroacoustic sounds played from a tape.
Jacob Raphael Druckman was an American composer born in Philadelphia.
Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate is a Chickasaw classical composer and pianist. His compositions are inspired by North American Indian history, culture and ethos.
Melinda Jane Wagner is a US composer, and winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in music. Her undergraduate degree is from Hamilton College. She received her graduates degrees from University of Chicago and University of Pennsylvania. She also served as Composer-in-Residence at the University of Texas (Austin) and at the 'Bravo!' Vail Valley Music Festival. Some of her teachers included Richard Wernick, George Crumb, Shulamit Ran, and Jay Reise.
Barbara Kolb was an American composer and educator, the first woman to win the Rome Prize in musical composition. Her music features sound masses of colorful textures, impressionistic sounds and atonal vocabulary, with influences from literary and visual arts. She taught at the Third Street Music School Settlement, Rhode Island College and Eastman School of Music.
Christopher Chapman Rouse III was an American composer. Though he wrote for various ensembles, Rouse is primarily known for his orchestral compositions, including a Requiem, a dozen concertos, and six symphonies. His work received numerous accolades, including the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award, the Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition, and the Pulitzer Prize for Music. He also served as the composer-in-residence for the New York Philharmonic from 2012 to 2015.
Sebastian Currier is an American composer of music for chamber groups and orchestras. He was also a professor of music at Columbia University from 1999 to 2007.
D. J. Sparr is an American composer and electric guitar soloist. He is influenced by impressionism and postminimalism, and is one of the preeminent composer-performers of his generation. Sparr's notable compositions include his one-act opera, Approaching Ali based on the work "The Tao of Muhammad Ali" by Davis Miller (2013), Concerto for Jazz Guitar and Orchestra: Katrina (2016), Violet Bond: Concerto for electric guitar and orchestra (2013), Dreams of the Old Believers for Orchestra (2014), Optima Vota for Orchestra (2012), Precious Metal: Concerto for flute and winds (2010), The Glam Seduction (2004), Woodlawn Drive (1999), Sound Harmonies with Air (2009), DACCA : DECCA : GaFfA (2008).
David Horne is a Scottish composer, pianist, and teacher.
Frank J. Oteri is a New York City-based composer, a music journalist, lecturer, and new music advocate.
Barry Ernest Conyngham,, is an Australian composer and academic. He has over 70 published works and over 30 recordings featuring his compositions, and his works have been premiered or performed in Australia, Japan, North and South America, the United Kingdom and Europe. His output is largely for orchestra, ensemble or dramatic forces. He is an Emeritus Professor of both the University of Wollongong and Southern Cross University. He is former Dean of the Faculty of the Fine Arts and Music at the University of Melbourne.
Enrico Chapela is a Mexican contemporary classical composer, whose works have been played by multiple major orchestras and has been commissioned to compose for institutions such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the National Center for the Performing Arts (Beijing) and the Festival Internacional Cervantino. His work is influenced by modern popular musical styles such as rock and electronic, as well as Mexican popular culture.
David T. Little is a Grammy-nominated American composer, record producer, and drummer known for his operatic, orchestral, and chamber works, most notably his operas JFK,Soldier Songs, and Dog Days which was named a standout opera of recent decades by The New York Times. He is the artistic director of Newspeak, an eight-piece amplified ensemble that explores the boundaries between rock and classical music, and is the Chair of the composition faculty at Mannes School of Music.
Michael Gilbertson is an American composer, conductor and pianist. He was one of three finalists for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Music, making him one of the youngest finalists in the history of the award.
Joseph Phibbs is an English composer of orchestral, choral and chamber music. He has also composed for theatre, both in the UK and Japan. Since 1998 he has written regularly to commissions for Festivals, for private sponsors, and for the BBC, which has broadcast premieres of his orchestral and chamber works from the Proms and elsewhere. His works have been given premieres in Europe, the United States and the Far East, and he has received prestigious awards, including most recently a British Composer Award, and a Library of Congress Serge Koussevitzky Music Foundation Award. Many of his works have been premiered by leading international musicians, including Dame Evelyn Glennie, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Leonard Slatkin, Sakari Oramo, Vasily Petrenko, Gianandrea Noseda, and the Belcea Quartet.
Oscar Bettison is a British-American composer known for large-scale chamber and large ensemble works. He has been described as possessing "a unique voice". His work has been described as having "an unconventional lyricism and a menacing beauty" and "pulsating with an irrepressible energy and vitality, as well as brilliant craftsmanship." He is a member of the composition faculty at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. Bettison was named a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Lawrence Irving Wilde, is a composer, educator, violinist, and nyckelharpa player. Wilde has been commissioned by and collaborated with ensembles such as the Kronos Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, JACK Quartet, ÆON Music Ensemble, Sō Percussion, Tesla Quartet, Aspen Music Festival Orchestra, Moscow String Quartet, Ensemble Mise-En, Juilliard Orchestra, and others.