Album Notes

USA Today declared Ravenshead the "Best New Opera of the Year" when it debuted in 1998. The work is a tour de force that combines Steve Mackey's multi-faceted score, the dazzling physicality and mordant wit of Rinde Eckert, and a superb performance by the Paul Dresher Ensemble to pull off what the New York Press called "equal parts MTV video and Metropolitan Opera."

Offered here with over 90 minutes of music on two CDs, the work is based on the real life story of Donald Crowhurst, a British entrepreneur who attempted to be the first person to sail solo around the world. A meditation on the meaning of heroism vs. hubris, of competence vs. charisma, Ravenshead had the "New York audience hanging on the edge of their seats" (American Theatre). And the Los Angeles Times wrote that the opera is "astonishing," that Eckert's "brilliant" performance "entertains us, amazes us and shatters us," and that Steve Mackey's music has "the energy of rock."

Mackey, whose idiom draws on western art music as well as popular music, has been commissioned by such sources as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and Dawn Upshaw. Champions of his music include Michael Tilson Thomas and the Kronos Quartet.