John Mackey (b. 1973) once famously compared the band and the orchestra to the kind of person a composer might be attracted to at a party. The orchestra seems ideal for you, but clearly feels superior and talks a lot about a whole slew of exes (like Dvorak and Beethoven). 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).
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. All are challenging, and many are innovative. 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. 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. His compositional style is fresh and original. I once heard him state that he counted the band Tool among his musical influences.
John Mackey publishes his own music through his website. This doubles as his blog, which is very informative for anyone looking for a composer’s perspective on new music (and pictures of food). He is featured on Wikipedia and the Wind Repertory Project. He is also on Twitter and has a Facebook composer page.
Mackey wrote Let Me Be Frank With You in the summer of 2020, as COVID raged and bands everywhere were looking at an unknown future. Flexible instrumentation seemed to be one possible answer, so Mackey rose to the challenge and started working on this piece, scored for four-part adaptable ensemble with drum set. Here is his version of the story from his website:
In the summer of 2020, in the midst of COVID, I felt like I needed to write something joyful. So I started writing, and after about 24 measures, I had this terrible feeling – not uncommon for composers – that maybe the piece I was writing had already been written. And in this case, I feared that I had just plagiarized Frank Ticheli.
I sent the opening to Frank, who was incredibly gracious in his response. He said that he had NOT written this tune – although maybe he COULD have. I agree – this is a Ticheli-esque tune if ever I had written one.
I finished the piece a few weeks later – my first attempt at writing from scratch for an adaptable instrumentation. I hope musicians (and eventually audiences!) enjoy this little 3 minute piece, in whatever combination of players come together to work on it. And thank you to Frank Ticheli – to whom the piece is dedicated – for his inspiration.
Here is just one possible version, from Lipscomb University:
In 2021, he also came up with a full band version:
You should also visit Mackey’s website for the piece, which has his MIDI rendering and a score preview. It also has an entry at the Wind Repertory Project.
I’ve written plenty about Frank Ticheli. One piece I haven’t yet covered happens to be one that I think sounds a lot like Let Me Be Frank With You. Enjoy Ticheli’s Wild Nights! (yes, the exclamation point is in the title).