Mason Bates / Masonic

"Be it mixing trip-hop and funk at a club or writing a symphonic or chamber work, composer Mason Bates is getting noticed for his straddling of classical music and electronica. ... Young, Juilliard-trained and already celebrated, he's become a fixture not only in concert halls but in the world of electronica as well. ... At a time when symphony orchestras nationwide are trolling for audience magnets - the type of new material that can lure members of generations X and Y along with older subscribers - Bates just might have that bait. "

-Concerto for Two Universes, Donna Perlmutter

"Mason Bates, 30 years old...knows how to command an orchestra just as well as he does his touchpad. Bates's Liquid Interface, a National Symphony commission that received its world premiere last night, surpassed in sheer sonic beauty even the works by Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky that rounded out the program." -From NSO, Electronic Beauty, Andrew Lindemann

Rehearsing at Cabrillo under Marin Alsop (Photo: Ron Jones)

"Take Mason Bates's Digital Loom for organ and electronics, a centennial commission. Definitely a voice from the younger generation, Bates reimagines the king of instruments as a surreal creature inventing its own space, the illuminated stops flashing like an enormous pinball machine and presided over by the organist as D.J. who programs wild sequences of hip-hop, funk, and ambient electronica" -Peter Davis

"Mason Bates's Digital Loom, for organ and electronics...transformed the hall into something between a decaying cathedral and an East Berlin club." -Alex Ross

With Maestra Marin Alsop at Cabrillo (Photo: Ron Jones)

"Contemporary composers can integrate high-definition recordings of sounds they want to evoke, as Mason Bates does in his cleverly constructed Liquid Interface. The first movement, "Glaciers Calving," begins with an ominous recording of glaciers crashing into the Antarctic Ocean, soon followed by dense, haunting swirls from the strings and electronic beats that accelerate to lively drum and bass rhythms. Mr. Bates's colorful four-movement tone poem, which uses a vast orchestra and electronics to evoke water in both soothing and menacing forms, received its New York premiere at Carnegie Hall ... Mr. Bates, who is also a D.J. (working under the name Masonic), has written other works blending classical and electronica. ... For the listener it was like wandering down a road with a string quartet playing on one side and a D.J. spinning on the other.-Vivian Schweitzer

"And never has a Beethoven's Ninth Symphony been so colored by the music that preceded it on the program. Mason Bates' Ode, commissioned by the Phoenix Symphony, takes the argument of the Beethoven and turns it backward ... So that when the Beethoven begins, and plays the music in the proper order, we have a different take on it."

Mason Bates & Robert Moody at the premiere of Rusty Air in Carolina by The Winston-Salem Symphony

"If Mason Bates' Rusty Air in Carolina is any indication, this 30-year-old composer (who is based in the East Bay and has a parallel career as a DJ) also has a voice...A Virginia native who summered as a teenager in South Carolina, his new work recalls sticky Southern nights, filled with the chatter and buzz of katydids and cicadas. ...You could feel the humidity, while luxuriating in Bates' exquisite, almost Impressionistic, atmospherics." -Richard Scheinin

The music of Mason Bates fuses innovative orchestral writing, the rhythms of electronica and techno, and imaginative narrative forms brought to life by cutting edge sound design. A composer of symphonic music who often includes live electronica in his orchestral music, he has become known as an artist who moves fluidly between those two worlds - performing on electronic drumpad and laptop, for example, with the National Symphony Orchesta in his Liquid Interface at Carnegie Hall, or creating an evening of concert music and electronica with members of The Berlin Philharmonic in the former East Side. Awarded both a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome and an American Academy in Berlin Prize, he is a member of the acclaimed New York-based Young Concert Artists.

This season featured the San Francisco Symphony premiere of The B-Sides, a large work inhabiting various surreal landscapes for orchestra and electronica. The premiere was commissioned and conducted by Maestro Michael Tilson Thomas, who also brouht an excerpt of the piece to Carnegie Hall for the April 15 YouTube Symphony concert. Another large work this season will be brought to life by the renown 'orchestra of voices' Chanticleer, who will premiere Sirens. The work explores hypnotic and alluring siren poetry from various cultures. Also in the Bay Area this season will be the premiere of a new work for the California Symphony, where he serves as composer-in-residence. A variety of in-depth articles about his recent work can be found here.

SUMMER FESTIVALS. Mason Bates brought his music to no fewer than three music festivals last summer. The Cabrillo Music Festival under Maestra Marin Alsop gave the West Coast premiere of Liquid Interface, which the San Francisco Chronicle described as "a probing and sustained achievement - and for at least one listener the triumphant high point of the weekend ... a four-movement tone poem that combines virtuoso orchestral writing with the rhythms and textures of electronica." and Aspen Music Festival featured scenes from his opera California Fictions in a workshop with Aspen Opera Theater. Rusty Air in Carolina, a work commissioned by the Winston-Salem Symphony that marries orchestral sonorities and the white-noise of Southern insects, was performed by the National Repertory Orchestra under the baton of Robert Moody, and it will appear this season on concert programs ranging from the Virginia Symphony to the Charleston Symphony.

SPECIAL PROJECTS. The famed San Francisco club Mezzanine last year presented Mercury Soul: An Electro-Acoustic Evening, which attracted 1,400 people to a space normally associated with rock and electronica artists, and the event returns to Mezzanine on May 28. A collaboration between visual installation artist Anne Patterson and Maestro Benjamin Shwartz of the San Francisco Symphony, the event embeds sets of classical music in an evening of groovy electronica and beautiful, surreal visuals. (Go to www.MercurySoul.org for more info.) Having performed in a variety of spaces as a DJ in the San Francisco and Berlin scenes, he has often appeared at venues such as 111 Minna, John Colins, Sip, Fuse, and Temple. In Rome, his sets of trip-hop and funk have been heard at Scarabocchio and Metaverso in Testaccio, a thriving electronica scene tunneled inside an ancient pottery dump. He has performed his live electronica with upright bassist David Arend at the SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art), the San Jose Jazz Festival, the Doug Fir club in Portland, and many others.

ACOUSTIC WORKS. A variety of purely acoustic works complement his diverse portfolio, including an orchestral prelude to Beethoven's 9th Symphony and a string quartet commissioned by The Naumburg Foundation (click here for a list of works). A great deal of his chamber music has been performed by the musicians of Young Concert Artists, the renown New York organization that launched Emmanuel Ax and Dawn Upshaw, and he maintains an active role in the world of vocal and theatrical music. His California Fictions - an opera set in the heyday of San Francisco's dot-com boom - was recently read as part of New York City Opera's VOX Showcase and will be workshopped this summer at Aspen Music Festival. Raised in Virginia where he studied piano with Hope Armstrong Erb and composition with Dika Newlin, Mason Bates enrolled in the Columbia-Juilliard program in New York City. Earning degrees in music composition and English literature, he studied primarily with John Corigliano, and he also worked under David Del Tredici and Samuel Adler (in addition to playwriting studies under Arnold Weinstein and Kenneth Koch). Now working with Edmund Campion at the University of California, Berkeley, he has found Berkeley's Center For New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) an important influence on his approach to electro-acoustic composition. Awards include a Charles Ives scholarship and fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Jacob Druckman Memorial Prize from Aspen Music Festival, ASCAP and BMI awards, and a Fellowship from Tanglewood. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Masonic performs live electronica as Benjamin Shwartz conducts at Mercury Soul in San Francisco

July 12, 2009 : Pianist Yeol Eum Son performs White Lies for Lomax at the Portland Piano Festival
May 28, 2008 : Mezzanine (for Mercury Soul)
May 20-31, 2009 : The Van Cliburn Foundation showcases its semifinalists in performances that include White Lies for Lomax, for solo piano
May 20-23, 2009 : The San Francisco Symphony under Maestro Michael Tilson Thomas premieres The B-Sides, for orchestra & electronica
April 15, 2009 : The YouTube Symphony performs The B-Sides, for orchestra & electronica, at Carnegie Hall
March 29, 2009 : The Adorno Ensemble performs Red River, for mixed ensemble & electronica, at the Switchboard Festival
March 20-22, 2009 : Chanticleer, 'an orchestra of voices,' premieres Sirens, a large work for a cappella chorus, at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music
March 18, 2009 : Chanticleer, 'an orchestra of voices,' premieres Sirens, a large work for a cappella chorus, at Mission Santa Clara in Santa Clara, CA
March 17, 2009 : Chanticleer, 'an orchestra of voices,' premieres Sirens, a large work for a cappella chorus, at First Congregational Church in Berkeley, CA
March 8 & 10, 2009 : The California Symphony under Maestro Barry Jekowski premieres a new orchestral work for at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek, CA
January 30-31, 2009 : The Oklahoma All-State Orchestra under Maestro Robert Moody performs Rusty Air in Carolina, for orchestra & electronica
January 28, 2009 : Isabelle Demers performs Digital Loom, for organ & electronica, on Juilliard's Focus! Festival
December 10, 2008 : Red River, for mixed ensemble & electronica, is performed on a concert featuring the music of Young Concert Artists composers at Merkin Concert Hall
members of The Berlin Philharmonic's Scharoun Ensemble performing String Band at Berlin's Roter Salon
December 8, 2008 : Red River, for mixed ensemble & electronica, is performed on a concert featuring the music of Young Concert Artists composers at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
November 9, 2008 : The Seattle Chamber Players performs The Life of Birds, for mixed ensemble, at the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento, CA
November 9, 2008 : The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony's performance of Omnivorous Furniture is broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Company at 1pm EST
November 7, 2008 : The Charleston Symphony under Maestro Robert Moody performs Rusty Air in Carolina, for orchestra & electronica
October 23, 2008 : The Adorno Ensemble performs Red River, for mixed ensemble & electronica, at San Francisco State University on a concert featuring electronic music by Mason Bates & Mark Applebaum
October 12, 2008 : Pianist Lara Downes performs White Lies for Lomax at Le Poisson Rounge in New York
October 7, 2008 : The Portland Symphony opens their season with Liquid Interface, for orchestra & electronica, at Merrill Auditorium in Portland, Maine under the direction of newly-appointed Maestro Robert Moody
October 6, 2008 : DJ Masonic teams up with members of the Portland Symphony for an evening of ambient electronica & classical music at Portland's reknown Space Liquid Interface, for orchestra & electronica, at Merrill Auditorium in Portland, Maine under the direction of newly-appointed Maestro Robert Moody
October 5, 2008 : The Seattle Chamber Players performs The Life of Birds, for mixed ensemble, at the Orcas Center at Orcas Island (Washington State)
September 27-28, 2008 : The Virginia Symphony under Maestro Robert Moody performs Rusty Air in Carolina, for orchestra & electronica
September 25-26, 2008 : The Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony under Maestro Edwin Outwater features Mason Bates in its Intersections series, performing Omnivorous Furniture, for sinfonietta & electronica
September 18, 2008 : The Seattle Chamber Players performs The Life of Birds, for mixed ensemble, at the Lithuanian Academy of Music
September 13, 2008 : The Seattle Chamber Players gives the European premiere of The Life of Birds, for mixed ensemble, at the Figura Festival in Copenhagen
August 21, 2008 : Icarian Rhapsody is performed by Benjamin Shwartz at the Magic Magic Orchestra at San Francisco's Herbst Theatre
Appearing on the cover of the UK's MUSO Magazine

August 2, 2008 : Liquid Interface, for orchestra & electronica, is performed by Marin Alsop at the Cabrillo Festival
July 27, 2008 : The National Repertory Orchestra performs Rusty Air in Carolina in Breckenridge, CO
July 24, 2008 : Excerpts from the opera California Fictions are performed at Aspen Music Festivlal
May 22, 2008 : Antares gives the NY premiere of Red River at the Chelsea Art Museum
May 20, 2008 : Pianist Eric Huebner gives the NY premiere of White Lies for Lomax at the Tenri Gallery
May 16, 17, 19 2008 : Rusty Air in Carolina, for orchestra & electronica, is performed by the Richmond Symphony, with Mason Bates performing live electronica on drumpad/laptop
May 4&6, 2008 : The California Symphony premieres a new work under the baton of Barry Jekowski
February 8, 2008 : Antares performs Red River, for chamber ensemble & electronica, at the Ravinia Festival
February 7, 2008 : Under the baton of Leonard Slatkin, The National Symphony gives the New York premiere of Liquid Interface at Carnegie Hall
February 2, 2007 : BAM Cafe (Brooklyn Academy of Music, NY), post-concert party
February 1, 2008 : San Francisco's famed club Mezzanine presents Mercury Soul, an electro-acoustic evening, featuring live electronica and new concert music in a club environment
January 25, 2008 : The Seattle Chamber Players premiere The Life of Birds on Seattle's On the Boards Festival
November 1, 2007 : Set of live electronica, with MarsBassMan, opening the Festival of New American Music in Sacramento, CA
Mason Bates performing on drumpad/laptop in the percussion section of The Winston-Salem Symphony

Mason Bates / Masonic

Mason Bates / Masonic : electronica and classical composer in San Francisco, Mason Bates is a member of Young Concert Artists. Official site of Mason Bates / Masonic (DJ and electronica / techno artist). ©2003 by Mason Bates / Masonic.