Somehow, it retains the usual Mackey-isms (functional harmony colored by diatonic clusters, unforced expressive lyricism, occasional unprepared sharp dissonances, harmonies that bloom from a single pitch) without asking too much from individual players. Mackey thus wrote the piece for players of junior high school ability, ending up somewhere around grade 3. It was a commission from two junior high school bands: Traughber (Rachel Maxwell, director) and Thompson (Daniel Harrison, director), both in Oswego, Illinois. Sheltering Sky came into being in 2012, and was premiered on April 21 of that year. He is also on Twitter and has a Facebook composer page. He is featured on Wikipedia and the Wind Repertory Project. This doubles as his blog, which is very informative for anyone looking for a composer’s perspective on new music (and pictures of food). John Mackey publishes his own music through his website. I once heard him state that he counted the band Tool among his musical influences. His compositional style is fresh and original. He won again in 2009 with Aurora Awakes. More recently, he was honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters with the 2018 Wladimir and Rhoda Lakond Award in Music. Mackey’s works for wind ensemble and orchestra have been performed around the world, and have won numerous composition prizes. His Redline Tango, originally for orchestra and then transcribed by the composer for band, won him the American Bandmasters Assocation/Ostwald Award in 2005, making him, then 32, the youngest composer ever to receive that prize. All are challenging, and many are innovative. With this attitude and his prodigious talent, John Mackey has become a superstar composer among band directors. He has even eclipsed his former teacher, John Corigliano, by putting out dozens of new band works, including a symphony, since 2005. The band, meanwhile, is loud and brash, but loves everything you do and can’t wait to play your stuff, the newer, the better! (I’ve rather poorly paraphrased Mackey – it’s best understood in his original blog post on the subject). The orchestra seems ideal for you, but clearly feels superior and talks a lot about a whole slew of exes (like Dvorak and Beethoven). 1973) once famously compared the band and the orchestra to the kind of person a composer might be attracted to at a party.
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