Steven Mackey was born in 1956. His first musical passion was playing the electric guitar in rock bands based in northern California. He later discovered concert music and has composed for orchestras, chamber ensembles, dance and opera. Since the mid 1980’s he has resumed his interest in the electric guitar and regularly performs his own work, including two concertos as well as numerous solo and chamber works.

Mackey is Professor of Music at Princeton University where he teaches composition, theory, twentieth century music, improvisation and a variety of special topics. As co-director of the Composers Ensemble at Princeton he coaches and conducts new work by student composers as well as twentieth century classics.

As a composer, Mackey has been honored by numerous awards including 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, the Stoeger Prize for Chamber Music by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and in 2000 the Miami performing arts center acknowledged his contributions to orchestral music with a special career achievement award. His Indigenous Instruments was selected to represent the U.S. at the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris in 1990. Mackey has been the composer in residence at numerous music festivals including Tanglewood and Aspen and he was featured at the 2000 American Mavericks Festival and the 2003 Holland festival in Amsterdam.

Steven Mackey's website