Steven Mackey: Time Release
BMOP/Sound

My first exposure to Steven Mackey came in 1993 with the acquisition of Kronos Quartet's Short Stories, his Physical Property (1992) memorable for its pairing of the group with the composer on guitar. Twenty-seven years later, this latest Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) collection of Mackey material eschews the instrument altogether for a purely orchestral presentation. Though a number of works by him feature guitar, Time Release in no way suffers from its absence: Mackey's distinctive sensibility as a composer is evident throughout the nearly eighty-minute recording, and the four representative works are wholly engaging. It's not the first time, incidentally, he's had material recorded by BMOP and its conductor Gil Rose, with Banana/Dump Truck (1995) appearing on Albany Records in 2005 and Dreamhouse (2003) on BMOP/sound five years later.

Having followed a PhD at Brandeis University with a professorship at Princeton (where he teaches to this day, serving as a mentor to aspiring composers), Mackey (b. 1956) directed his energy towards uniting his long-time love of rock guitar music with formal academic training, the desire emblematic of his open-minded approach to composition and willingness to draw upon multiple eras and styles. Whereas his aforementioned Dreamhouse, for example, is scored for solo baritone, vocal quartet, electric guitar quartet, and orchestra, his 2017 New Amsterdam release Orpheus Unsung is pitched as a wordless electric guitar opera.

Four pieces appear on Time Release, the earliest the title work, a percussion concerto written in 2005, and the opening Urban Ocean (2013) the most recent. All are long-form works, the shortest ten-plus minutes and the longest 2011's Tonic at twenty-four (Time Release is, in fact, longer at thirty-two, but it's presented in four parts). Each impresses in different ways, yet all testify to Mackey's vibrant imagination and his command of orchestral colour and large-scale structuring. If the opener isn't quite Debussy-esque, it's definitely painterly in its emphasis on orchestral texture. A striking range of instrument sounds—harp, chimes, vibraphone, tam-tam, glockenspiel, and so on—adds considerably to the evocative scene-painting conjured by strings, horns, and woodwinds. Emerging from the oceanic swell is the work's core motif, an undulating, rather sardonic string figure spiked by percussive rattles and a pounding bass drum; elsewhere, the work advances apace, Mackey both evoking the mysterious churn below the water's surface and the helter-skelter activity of flora and fauna above. While some passages see them acting as combatants, a delicate resolution is ultimately struck between the parts, all working interdependently to support the work's grand vision.

The four-part Time Release features percussionist Colin Currie in a tour-de-force performance, the work's changing character intimated by its movements' “Short/Long,” “Slow/Fast,” and “Smooth/Bumpy” designations. Marimba is Currie's primary voice, though its sonorities are augmented by wood blocks, alm glocken, and tightly tuned drums. Mackey makes a strong case for the capabilities of the marimba, whose warm sound he describes as “distinctive and soulful.” Time Release is a concerto in the truest sense of the word, merging as it does multiple moods and dynamic contrasts into an encompassing whole. Immense care is taken by the composer in the balancing of soloist and orchestra, each one vital to the work's expressive personality. During the first part, sinuous orchestral passages intertwine with the rambunctious patterning of the marimba, after which loud horns set the stage for Currie's rapid phrase-making in the oft-agitated yet also occasionally romantic second. The third finds the marimba waxing lyrically in its largely soloist role, the BMOP retreating into the background but for ornamental punctuations, after which “Alleluia,” true to its name, guides the piece to a spirited close.

Scored for chamber orchestra, Tonic introduces darker tonalities into the recording. Apparently, the work developed out of four elements: what Mackey calls “Shadow Chords,” his son's tonic-clonic seizures, a lullaby he wrote for his daughter, and a rustic tune that emerged from a guitar improv (“Shadow Chords” is the term he coined for the result of combining, in his words, a “clear and relatively simple foreground harmony with a more complex background shadow”). Regardless of its origins, the dramatic single-movement setting advances, similar to Urban Ocean, with fluidity, forward momentum, and with a central motive, in this case a short swirling figure followed by a longer one. Tension is at a high pitch throughout due to dissonances emerging from chord combinations, yet lightness is present in impish violin and woodwind melodies that surface halfway through. There's rhythmic bluster, too, as well as a gloriously rhapsodic, brass-powered finale.

Of the four works, it's Turn the Key that's the most playful due in large part in its grounding in a funky clave rhythm, the composer describing it at his website as “some weird dance by a crippled but soulful creature.” The mutating iterations of that rhythmic figure translate into a celebratory concoction of careening character and irrepressible theatricality. In the long run, there's something on the release for any number of classical listener types, from the comparative conventionality of the percussion concerto to the more daring theatrics of Urban Ocean and Tonic. Anyone eager to sample Mackey's guitar-based works should look elsewhere, but those wanting a cross-section of his orchestral works could do a lot worse than start here. Adding to the recording's appeal is, of course, the involvement of the BMOP and Rose, their participation a guarantee of the high quality of the performances presented.

September 2020