Press

River Tree

Frances Thompson McKay has filled a number of important roles in the musical life of this city, as a teacher, as a producer of concerts of contemporary music and as a prolific composer. The Contemporary Music Forum presented a program of six of her works at the Corcoran Gallery on Thursday, a courageous undertaking for both the performers and the composer.
McKay demands a great deal of her performers, both technically and musically. Her compositions are studies in textures and rhythms. She has an ear for interesting color and she uses material brilliantly and subtly but always economically. Lyricism is not high on her agenda but she is able to craft lovely short melodic motifs that are distinctive enough to hold a whole piece together. The artists of the Contemporary Music Forum did her proud.                   

 The Washington Post,Saturday, May 11, 2002

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A Critical Mass

“At this point, peace may be the only road to survival on this planet,” Washington composer Frances Thompson McKay says in a program note to her oratorio, “A Critical Mass.” This complex, powerful work. . . is a protest against a world in which the United  States spends billions on its nuclear arsenal while thousands of people die each day of hunger. 
. . .members of the audience simultaneously read segments of [Thomas Merton’s Prayer for Peace]. No words emerged clearly. . . but the impression of humanity yearning for a better world was overwhelming.
 Joseph McLellan, The Washington Post, 2004

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This ambitious work employs dissonance, changing  meters, masterly vocal arrangements, taped  sounds and silence to communicate  McKay’sevocative,  sometimes  provocative ideas.
 J. Kenneth Townsend, The Washington Post, 1989

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The audience had  no choice but to be affected by the mass. . . gripping in its portrayal of human frailties,  the score fraught with emotional conflict . . . music of quiet desolation. …stately and chaotic, as if hinting at the incredulity of allowing such events to occur.
Norman Middleton, The Washington Post, 1986

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River Time

An amorphous choral piece that writhes and meanders and surges forward  and laps back on itself as a river might, and it is layered with harmonic currents that flow arbitrarily…. The performances was appropriately powerful and enveloping. . . the work itself is bold arresting, and intelligently made.
Ronald Brown, The Washington Post , 2002

 

Take the Wings of the Morning To the Uttermost Parts of the Sea

A marvelously mobile arioso heavily and intricately scored for solo cello, the scores thins to a lonely, affirmative utterance that transfigures the Latinate dance materials that it comprises. . . McKay’s monody surged  and soared.
Mark Adamo, The Washington Post

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Nursery Rhymes

The music is a parade of all the wispy sounds you can  imagine.
Paul  Hume,  The Washington Post, 1980

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Rites of Passage

Compelling, richly textured varied theme. . .a broad variety of descriptive, meditative, imaginative and even jazzy styles. . . It left the audience enthusiastic and ready for more.
 Joseph McLellan, The Washington Post, 1988

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Elegy in the Form of a Dream

Soul  shattering.
Dana Franchitto, The Cape Codder, 1984

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Expressionistic fantasy music, filled with strange rappings, thrumming inside the piano, all manner of unexpected sounds designed to stimulate the imagination of the listener
 Dika Newlin, The Richmond Times Dispatch, 1984

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Manipulated sound and unusual structure marked McKay’s Elegy. Her programmatic composition unwound like a perpetual slow-motion machine, an aural “This is your life” with the requisite memories and pain.
   J. Kenneth Townsend, The Washington Post, 1978

 

Spirituals

It had the audience singing “We Shall Overcome” in its central movement—a moment of hushed magic in the darkened church.
 Joseph McLellan, The Washington Post, 1987

 

Tidal Watch

Outstanding. . . beautifully evocative. . . sound remarkable sounds
Joseph McLellan, The Washington Post, 1983

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An essentially evocative moment came when [Katherine] Hay blew into a giant conch shell
Dika Newlin, The Richmond Times Dispatch, 1983

 

Pegasus

Mostly it exercised the flute’s gift for simple song, but sometimes it calls for special effects, including production of more than one note at a time or the sound of wind in vast, open spaces.
 Joseph McLellan, The Washington Post