John Mackey



An American classical composer of the modern day. His musical repertoire is mainly geared towards wind band, with some occasional orchestral pieces here and there. He's also composed a few pieces for modern dance and ballet.

His pieces tends to be rather complex with very prominent percussion parts, both pitched and unpitched, as well as lots of Uncommon Time.

He keeps a blog on his website, where you can listen to recordings of all of his pieces. And they are awesome.

Mr. Mackey's pieces exhibit the following tropes

 * Cue the Sun: "Aurora Awakes" is meant to symbolize the sun rising. Another piece written later called "Hymn to a Blue Hour" has been viewed as a reversal of Aurora due to it being about a time of day twelve hours from dawn, plus the fact that both begin in a similar manner.
 * Uncommon Time: A good number of his pieces have been known to alternate time signatures every measure, usually between something common and something uncommon.
 * Sweet Home Alabama: "Sasparilla" [sic] definitely has a Southern feel to it.

Mr. Mackey himself exhibits the following tropes

 * Expecting Someone Taller
 * Food Porn: He's a foodie, alright. Any post on his blog that isn't about music is pretty much guaranteed to include gratuitous closeups of food.
 * Kindhearted Cat Lover: He spends an entire blog post gushing about his Siamese, Loki.