MASON BATES
DIGITAL LOOM

MASON BATES
Antares
Chanticleer
Biava Quartet
Isabelle Demers
at the Organ of Trinity Church, NYC

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"From Amber Frozen… is bracing, but never abrasive or ugly…fascinating sonorities. The string playing, by the way, is jaw-droppingly good—detailed, always alive, and mentally connected….This is the best new piece I’ve heard in quite a while.

 On to Digital Loom…The organ writing … is overall very impressive, especially in the use of the

stops for crescendos and decrescendos. …The individuality of the organ writing is what really makes it…

Red River [has] nervous energy as well, but with an undercurrent of mischief …Some passages are rhapsodic and very beautiful; others are fragmented, swinging, or abstract.

the pieces …don’t pander to anybody. They’ll have their share of haters, but they are not insipid; they keep a good middle ground between classical writing and structure and the popular music they draw from. And all the players are convinced that the pieces are worthwhile. Bates’s writing is principled, often dissonant, interesting, well thought-out, and organic, never forced. The ‘Intro’, interludes, and ‘Outtro’ all work well with the pieces."
American Record Guide ~ January/February 2010

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-B Sides 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, the California Symphony's Young American Composer-in-Residence, and is on the management roster of the acclaimed Young Concert Artists.

In May 2007, he received an Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an award that “honors outstanding artistic achievement and acknowledges the composer who has arrived at his or her own voice.”