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, which doubles as his blog. It 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 he has a Facebook composer page.
Mackey wrote Hymn to a Blue Hour in 2010 on a commission from Mesa State College. As you can read in his very candid blog, most of his music up to this point was of the loud and fast variety. Several conductors started asking him for a slow piece around the same time. This was the result. He wrote it while living in New York City in the summer of 2010, surrounded by the immense noise of the city but liberated from his car and the music he usually listened to while driving everywhere. Choice quote from the blog:
It was pretty funny, really, with me sitting outside on a beautiful summer morning in New York City, Moleskine music notebook in one hand, and my iPhone Pianist app in the other (so I could find pitches), writing this piece. As I said on Facebook, I felt like I was in an ad for something.
The “Blue Hour” of the title is supposed to be “the period of twilight where there’s neither full daylight nor complete darkness”. As is often the case with many a composer’s music, the title came after the music was finished, and in this case was suggested by Mackey’s wife.
Jake Wallace provides even more program notes on this piece on Mackey’s website. I won’t copy it all out here, but this is required reading! Look especially at the bit about composing at the piano. You can also look at the score.
Hear Hymn to a Blue Hour via YouTube here: