Steven Mackey's MEMOIR To be Released As New Album By Dover Quartet And Arx Duo On Bridge Records

On Friday, August 16, 2024, the world premiere recording of GRAMMY Award-winning composer Steven Mackey's dramatic musical work, Memoir (2021), is released as a new album on Bridge Records. Featuring the dynamic percussionists of arx duo and the award-winning Dover Quartet, with direction from Mark DeChiazza and narrated by Natalie Christa Rakes, Memoir explores the tumultuous 20th century as told through the eyes of a first-generation American woman (Elaine Mackey, Steven's mother) charting her own path in search of the American Dream. Track 5 "Jerry Versus Jim" (July 26) and Track 7 "Hard Ten" (August 9) will be released as special preview tracks.

In his program note, Mackey shares, "Memoir is an adaptation of my own mother's memoir which gives the process and the product a heightened personal connection. The script is a series of short vignettes which trace Elaine Mackey's life, born in Steel Town USA, coming of age in the Great Depression, escaping an ill-fated Hollywood marriage to work for the Department of Defense in post-war Europe and raising a family in Northern California in the volatile 60's. Against the backdrop of the events of the 20th century, a la Forrest Gump, there is a touching candor and vulnerability to my mom's stories revealing the tension between her shy nature and her longing for adventure; her "nice-girl" upbringing and her openness to experience. Familiar themes of love, loss, gender roles, and social mores ensconced in her intense personal struggle with alcoholism and its stigma."

In the 75-minute musical work, Elaine's journey is told through music and narrated vignettes from her own memoir and that of her son, the composer. Mackey added, "Memoir more directly references her favorite music and the lullaby medley she sang to me as a child. Overall, the musical language of Memoir is a bit simpler and more direct than I would do if I were writing a piece without connection to this text. Her voice, ringing through these stories, asked for something more innocent."

Written for string quartet, percussion duo and narrator, the visually and sonically captivating work spans diverse musical landscapes and characters, from witty and playful to rich and profound.

As director Mark DeChiazza points out, "the narrator is also like the other musicians with whom she shares the stage. The memoir's text is her orchestral part, the narration another instrument in the mix, its rhythms and tones, energies and emotions weaving into the aggregate whole that comprises Mackey's reckoning with his mother's story. The text of Elaine's memoir, and its photos and memorabilia too, provide Mackey his point of entry-a portal through which he conducts a musical conversation with his mother, his engagement with the document she left him imaginative perspectives on her, their relationship, and ultimately himself. "

Memoir saw its world premiere in 2022 at the Walton Arts Center and enjoyed subsequent performances at Princeton University and Kingston Chamber Music Festival, with its most recent performance in February 2024 presented by the Seattle Symphony.

Memoir Tracklist

Steven Mackey (b. 1956) - Memoir for percussion duo, string quartet, and narrator (2021)

Act I (22:30)
1. Introductions (4:09)
2. Aunts (4:03)
3. Cars (4:57)
4. More Machines (9:21)

Act II (26:57)
5. Jerry Versus Jim (3:55)
6. Jitterbug (3:48)
7. Hard Ten (2:30)
8. Only Make Believe (5:05)
9. Medley (3:58)
10. Back in the USA (2:06)
11. Night and Day (5:35)

Act III (27:00)
12. Hair (5:36)
13. Drinking Problem (1:32)
14. Tacos (4:30)
15. Rock Bottom (2:40)
16. Conclusion and Epilogue (12:42)

Total Time: 01:16:27

Dover Quartet (Joel Link, violin; Bryan Lee, violin; Hezekiah Leung, viola; Camden Shaw, cello)
arx duo (Garrett Arney, percussion; Mari Yoshinaga, percussion)
Natalie Christa Rakes, Narrator
Steven Mackey, Narrator

BRIDGE 9601
Director/Dramaturge: Mark DeChiazza
Executive Producer: Garrett Arney
Producer: David Frost
Engineers: Drew Schlegel, Cory Fica (vibraphone overdub), Carlos Dias Jr. (narration)
Editors: David Frost, Jennifer Nulsen
Mix Engineer: David Frost
Mastering Engineer: Jennifer Nulsen
Vibraphone Overdub Performer: Sijia Huang
Recorded: Curtis Institute of Music, Gould Rehearsal Hall, on January 20-22, 2023
Graphic Design: Casey Siu

About Steven Mackey

Steven Mackey is a GRAMMY-winning composer of works for chamber ensemble, orchestra, dance, and opera-commissioned by the greatest orchestras around the world. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and recipient of many awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award. Bright in coloring, ecstatic in inventiveness, lively and profound, Mackey's music spins the tendrils of his improvisatory riffs into large-scale works of grooving, dramatic coherence

Mackey began composition studies at the University of California at Davis and received his PhD at Brandeis University. Upon graduating and becoming a professor at Princeton, Mackey came to realize his true creative voice by merging his academic training with the free-spirited physicality of his mother-tongue rock guitar music. Mackey's music is published by Boosey & Hawkes.

Today, he lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with his wife, composer Sarah Kirkland Snider, and their son Jasper and daughter Dylan, and teaches at Princeton University, where he mentors young composers as director of the Edward T. Cone Composition Institute.

In fall 2022, Mackey joined the composition faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music. He continues to explore an ever-widening world of timbres befitting a complex, 21st-century culture, while always striving to make music that unites the head and heart, that is visceral, that gets us moving. Learn more at www.stevenmackey.com.

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