Frances McKay

Frances McKay grew up in the Tidewater region of Virginia and has composed works about water issues, such as global warming and the survival of the Chesapeake, as well as about nuclear proliferation. She was a composer member and Program Director for the Contemporary Music Forum at the Corcoran Gallery from 1979-1987, and founder and co-director of Music of the Spheres, a concert series focused on improvisation in diverse styles, based at St. Mark’s Capitol Hill from 1985-1989, for which she composed A Critical Mass, a church mass incorporating Thomas Merton’s Prayer for peace, written during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The mass was written in celebration of the efforts to end nuclear confrontation (duration one hour, for chorus, chamber ensemble, small gamelon, and electro-accoustical sound). It has been produced three times, the last two times it was conducted by Joel Lazar and compared international spending on nuclear arms in the face of the overwhelming need for resources to end world hunger. She has received fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, MacDowell, the DC Commission on the Arts (11 Individual Artist Grants), the National Society of Arts and Letters, the Cité International des Art in Paris, and the Peabody Conservatory. She was co-founder of Music of the Spheres, a concert series that featured improvisation, and she has performed piano improvisations for silent films at the National Gallery, and played for the first presentation of a silent movie at the Tribeca Film Festival. Solo recitals of her works have been presented by the Contemporary Music Forum at the Corcoran Gallery, Strathmore’s American Composer Series, and by the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop.