|
Mason Bates
Young American Composer-in-Residence, 2007-2010
Celebrated classical and electronica composer Mason Bates has been selected as California Symphony’s 2007-2010 Young American Composer-in-Residence (YACR). Mason is recipient of both a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome and an American Academy in Berlin Prize. Mason composes for a wide variety of media, with a portfolio of orchestral, chamber, theatrical, and electronic works. Mason has received several orchestral commissions including from the National Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Phoenix Symphony, Oakland Symphony and Juilliard School.
Mason is currently working on his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, and is also an accomplished DJ and electronica artist who mixes a unique blend of downtempo hip-hop, trip-hop, French house, and funk at venues in San Francisco, Berlin and Rome. A member of the acclaimed Young Concert Artists of New York, both Bates’ purely acoustic works and those with electronics appear on concerts across the country.
Regarded as a rising new talent, Bates has already been the subject of two major profiles, both last year, in Symphony magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle. In the former, Kyle Gann noted that “Mason Bates, or someone like him, was bound to appear sooner or later…Many artists in one of these worlds have dabbled in the other. But Bates is the first to carry on two careers in tandem, and win credibility in both arenas….The most impressive thing is how comfortably his two idioms mix.” Music critic Joshua Kosman in the Chronicle wrote: “Classical composers have been drawing on popular dance forms since the time of Bach and even earlier. So, in theory, there should be nothing outlandish about music that combines the sounds of a symphony orchestra with the sampled rhythmic grooves of trip-hop. But the work of Oakland composer Mason Bates can still catch a listener off guard. It’s surprising to hear these two musical strains engaging in friendly but somewhat prickly dialogue, and even more remarkable to hear the trick managed with the kind of sophistication and urgency that Bates brings to it.”
Mason Bates’ Home Page
|
