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originally published: 03/07/2023

Composer Steven Mackey, Photo by Kah Poon

Between April 21-23, Steven Mackey's RIOT receives its world premiere with the New Jersey Symphony and Princeton Glee Club Choir led by Xian Zhang, joined by mezzo-soprano Alicia Olatuja and Mackey himself on electric guitar. The large-scale work, written in collaboration with U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, was composed in honor of New Jersey Symphony’s 100th year.

A longtime resident of New Jersey and a professor of composition at Princeton University for nearly four decades, Mackey is a frequent collaborator with the New Jersey Symphony, and serves as Director of the orchestra’s Edward T. Cone Composition Institute.

Mackey states: “"My daydreams, about what I might do for such an auspicious occasion were grand: my friends in the NJSO joined on a packed stage by a vocal soloist, a chorus and myself on guitar, all singing and playing with abandon." He asked poet Tracy K. Smith (who was a colleague at Princeton) to provide text, as “she knows how to make words sing.”

As Mackey and Smith began to work on the piece in summer 2020, what began as a celebratory work shifted following the death of George Floyd to a piece that “foregrounds race and resilience.” The first line written by Smith is a dark, personal statement that Mackey describes as setting up “the interplay between personal and communal, the soloist and the chorus”: “Sometimes I feel / the Black in my heart / like a map / made of tar. You need / only part your lips / to mar what isn't yours.” This is followed by a series of six texts that “trace a trajectory that culminates in positive affirmation and a celebration of hope, perseverance, commitment, and community. The music aspires to honor that trajectory.”

 

 

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We live—

gold hot bright

the line of us

never tiring

We live—

We live—

Performances: Friday, April 21 at 8:00pm at Richardson Auditorium, Princeton, NJ

Saturday, April 22 at 8:00pm at New Jersey Performing Arts Center,  Newark, NJ

Sunday, April 23 at 3:00pm at State Theatre New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ

New Jersey Symphony

Princeton University Glee Club

Xian Zhang, conductor

 

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Steven Mackey, electric guitar

Alicia Olatuja, mezzo-soprano

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART  Symphony No. 25

STEVEN MACKEY  RIOT (World Premiere)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART  Overture to Don Giovanni

ANTON BRUCKNER  Te Deum

The performances of RIOT will mark Mackey’s third major world premiere in as many months, following Concerto for Curved Space with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in January and Red Wood for Delirium Musicum in February, part of the Soraya’s “Treelogy” Project.