Search - Mason Bates (electronica);Antares;Biava Quartet;Chanticleer;Isabelle Demers (organ) :: Mason Bates: Digital Loom

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 drum-pad 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 at the Volksbühne in the former East Side. Recent commissions have explored everything from the marriage of orchestral sonorities and earthquake recordings (Music From Underground Spaces, commissioned by the California Symphony) to the fusion of techno beats and the ancient sounds of a pipe organ in Digital Loom. Repeat performances of his works have occurred throughout the United States, from the Oakland Symphony to the New York Philharmonic, and he is a frequent guest at summer music festivals such as Tanglewood, Cabrillo, and Aspen. Current events bring the premieres of The-BSides for orchestra & electronica, which will be premiered by the San Francisco Symphony in May, and Sirens for the renowned male chorus, Chanticleer. He currently serves as composer-in-residence with the California Symphony. Active as a performer, he has played his Concerto for Synthesizer with the Atlanta and Phoenix Symphonies, and he also stays busy as a DJ of trip-hop and electronica in San Francisco s many clubs, lounges and art spaces. With Maestro Benjamin Schwartz of the San Francisco Symphony and set designer Anne Patterson, he recently launched Mercury Soul: An Electro-Acoustic Evening, which brought over a thousand people to the San Francisco club Mezzanine to hear contemporary classical music interspersed with DJs and live electronica. Studying English literature and music composition in the Columbia-Juilliard program, he worked primarily with John Corigliano, and has also studied with David Del Tredici and Samuel Adler. Now living in the San Francisco Bay Area where he worked with Edmund Campion at UC Berkeley, he is currently a Guggenheim Fellow and the composer in residence for the California Symphony.