Mackey wins Grammy

When University professors step into the limelight, it's usually not alongside Chris Brown and Taylor Swift.

Composer Steven Mackey, the chair of the music department, took home a Grammy Award Sunday night in the category of Best Small Ensemble Performance for his recording “Lonely Motel: Music from Slide.” Mackey was also nominated for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.

Mackey collaborated on the recording with friend Rinde Eckert, who wrote the text and provided vocals. The duo performed with the avant-garde sextet eighth blackbird, which commissioned the piece.

The composition began as a musical theater piece, but as time went on, Mackey said the music became the driving force of the project and the group decided to turn it into a CD.

Mackey, who is on sabbatical this year, said the group was looking for something “bigger, more adventurous than a chamber music piece.”

Mackey said that winning the award meant that his music was reaching a wider audience. Much of the appeal of contemporary classical music, he said, lies in its growing accessibility.

“Contemporary classical music is going through a really great period,” he said. He explained that modern-day composers have pooled influences in their music that previous generations of composers have had difficulty coming to grips with.

“Contemporary concert music is really enjoying a broader appeal among audiences because composers are exploring things more appealing to mainstream taste.” He noted in particular the fusion of classical music with indie rock.

Michael Pratt, conductor of the Princeton University Orchestra, credited Mackey in large part for initiating this fusion of popular and classical influences when Mackey began composing in the mid-1980s.

“When Steve came along, he was in the vanguard of a generation of composers that brought an enormous breath of fresh air,” Pratt said. “Music in the Academy and in the early ’80s had become very choked ... and it’s not anymore.”

Pratt said the integration of popular music into classical pieces is not a new phenomenon, citing the late 19th-century composer Gustav Mahler’s use of street music as an example.

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Music professor Paul Lansky also noted contemporary classical music’s changing relationship to popular culture.

“There’s a lot of fusion going on,” Lansky said, noting that Radiohead sampled one of his songs in 2000.

Mackey began his music career in the 1970s playing rock and blues on the electric guitar, an experience that had a profound impact on his music. He still plays the instrument and played it in the winning recording.

Despite the glamour of the Grammy Awards, Mackey has missed the ceremony two years in a row. Last year, when he was nominated for a Grammy but did not win, he skipped the red carpet for the birth of his daughter. This year, the awards conflicted with the premier of one of his orchestra pieces.

Still, Mackey said, he hopes to make it to the awards someday.

“Hopefully, I’ll get nominated again, and I’ll be able to go,” he said.