Macklay started off playing oboe at the age of 10, and was an active participant in choir growing up. She also picked up the piano around the age of 12. By the time she was in her late teens, 17 or 18, she started composing. This focus on composition was later formalized during her sophomore year of undergraduate studies for her BA degree at Luther College. Alongside her interest in composition, she did continue on with her studies in oboe, even through her MM degree at The University of Memphis.[8]
Harmonibots (2015), a sonic and kinetic installation of inflatable harmonica-playing robots commissioned by the International Alliance for Women in Music.[10][11]
Many Many Cadences (2016), a string quartet for Spektral Quartet, Macklay's second ASCAP Award recipient and a Grammy nominee.[12]
^Frank J. Oteri (June 2017). "Sky Macklay: Why I Love Weird Contemporary Music". New Music USA. Retrieved 2023-01-28. Oboe came first. I always really loved music, and when I was a kid I was in choir. I started playing oboe when I was ten, and I was really into it. Then I started getting serious about piano at 12 and studied pretty seriously in my teens. I started composing when I was 17 or 18, not that early. One of my creative outlets before that was that my friends and I had sort of a movie-making collective called AnimeSpoof.com; we did spoofs of anime, but also other funny movies. I sometimes did music for that and then late in high school, I started writing songs. I became serious about composing my sophomore year of college and became a composition major. But I always kept playing oboe and was serious about that, too, and kept studying it through my master's degree.
^Sky Mackley. "Dissolving Bands". skymacklay.com. Retrieved 2016-04-11. As I was searching for a title for my piece, I recalled the first sentence in the Declaration of Independence which begins, "When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands...
^"Harmonibots". Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States. 2015. Retrieved 2016-04-11.
^"Sky Macklay". Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States. Retrieved 2016-04-11.