Liquid Interface 8.2.08 / Recital 8.3.08

Mason Bates b. 1977, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Awarded both a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome and an American Academy in Berlin Prize, Mason Bates moves fluidly between the worlds of concert music and electronica. Busy with both commissions and performance engagements, he is a member of the acclaimed Young Concert Artists, and his music has been described by the San Francisco Chronicle as "lovely to hear and ingeniously constructed."

Recent commissions have explored everything from the marriage of orchestral sonorities and the white noise of Southern insects (Rusty Air in Carolina, for The Winston-Salem Symphony and subsequently performed by The New York Philharmonic),to the fusion of techno beats and the ancient sounds of a pipe organ (Digital Loom, organ & electronics). Repeat performances of all his recent works appear throughout the country, from The Atlanta Symphony to the American Composers Orchestra. A new work for The California Symphony, Music From Underground Spaces, will be premiered in May as part of his recent appointment as their composer-in-residence. This season, he made his Carnegie Hall debut with The National Symphony in the performance of his Liquid Interface, a large work for orchestra and electronica premiered last year by Leonard Slatkin at The Kennedy Center.

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 artspaces (111 Minna, Temple, Mezzanine, John Colins, Varnish). With Maestro Benjamin Shwartz 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 DJing and live electronica. A variety of purely acoustic works complement his diverse portfolio, including a string quartet commissioned by The Naumburg Foundation and a many works for voice. 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 Bay Area, he currently works with Edmund Campion at UC Berkeley.

For more info, visit www.MasonicElectronica.com.

Photo by: Lydia Danmiller