The Instrumentalist Magazine published a wonderful interview with composer John Mackey and conductor Jerry Junkin about their upcoming release, Asphalt Cocktail. We’ve got a couple of quotes below, but the full interview is available online at TheInstrumentalist.com

Jerry Junkin: I have wanted to record an all-John Mackey CD for a long time. Everybody loves John’s music, but some people have a narrow view of his work, and his palette is wider and more diverse than they realize. I wanted this recording to show that. I wanted to include the high-energy, loud, strong music that he does so well, but also the introspective, quiet intuitive pieces that are not what people think of first.

Junkin: I met him when everybody else did in Minneapolis at CBDNA, when Fran Richard (ASCAP) introduced John to the profession as someone we should all know.

John Mackey: I sent my piece Redline Tango to Jerry in about 2005, and he told me that he planned to program it. And then he didn’t. I thought, “he must hate the piece.” Then, once he programmed it, he wouldn’t stop doing it. Since then, we have worked on almost every piece I have done except Foundry, which is explicitly for middle school band.

Junkin: I thought about recording Foundry, as well as several of the easier pieces that deserve a professional recording, for this CD. There are so many middle school bands that play that piece. However, eighty minutes is the maximum on a CD. At a certain point you just have to put the double bar on it.

See much, much more on TheInstrumentalist.com