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other. But Bates is the first to carry on two careers in tandem, and win credibility in both arenas. The Bilingualist As I say, it was only a matter of time. Throughout the 1970s, the pop, classical, and jazz worlds were meticulously distinct. Classically trained but keenly attuned Musicians who were trained in more than to the possibilities of electronica, composer one field knew not to mix. In the 1980s Mason Bates is making waves in both the club that all changed. Punk guitarists started working with minimalist drones, classical scene and the world. composers played rock clubs, symphonies for electric guitars appeared. The crossovers were sometimes amateurish. When the pop by Kyle Gann audience was impressed, the classical fans generally weren’t, and vice versa. But even- tually, someone was bound to grow up so immersed in genre-mixing that they would get both sides of the equation right. Bates has. Born in 1977, he never knew a world in which playing pop disqualified him from classical, or vice versa. He acknowledges that they’re still separate: His web site, www.masonicelectronica.com, opens with the command, “Choose one: electronica / classical.” Both routes, howev- er, lead to kudos. In he’s won the Rome Prize, the Berlin prize, the Charles Ives Award, and a Naumburg com- mission, plus a string of orchestral commis- sions. In the pop arena, he performs his own blend of hip-hop, trip-hop, funk, and electronica at clubs like the Roter Salon in Berlin, Cloud 9 in , and Scarabocchio in Rome. He has patrons on one side, fans on the other. The most impressive thing is how comfortably his two idioms mix. For instance, Juilliard, Bates’s alma mater, commissioned a piece from him to cele- brate their 100th anniversary. The resulting work, Digital Loom for organ and electron- ics—or as he terms it, “electronica”—was premiered at New York’s Peter Jay Sharp Theater on February 2. Digital Loom starts with a drone chord on the organ. Over it

oth come various pops, clicks, and scratchy Schr sounds that could be mistaken for back-

Christian ground noise on a vinyl record. Eventually Mason Bates, or someone like electronica has a quasi-classical fluidity, and you realize that those little noises have him, was bound to appear sooner or later. in his orchestra music, he performs on lap- formed a groove, to which new noises keep Bates is a fast-rising young composer of top computer and drum pads as a soloist, adding. The chord metamorphoses unno- orchestral music, and also a deejay. In the eliciting much the same kind of noise ticeably at first, but finally breaks into syn- latter guise, he performs at electronica clubs groovesthat he uses as a deejay. Many artists copations that have their own complex rela- under the nom-de-laptop DJ Masonic. His in one of these worlds have dabbled in the tion to the groove. Every pop and click is

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meticulously notated in the score. It’s a degrees in composition and literature. (In from six months in Berlin, Bates is now well-thought-out piece. the latter discipline he gravitated toward completing a doctorate at Berkeley—and And it works because, for Bates, the the English medieval mystery plays, drawn receiving the kind of attention that very organ and club-dance beats aren’t really in to their “combination of folksiness and few composers receive while still students. opposition. He’s seen through to their complicated symbolism.”) At Juilliard his Part of this was due to further encour- underlying similarity, not of musical mate- composition teachers were agements from Moody. “Mason and I had rials, but of social function. “After all,” he and , who encouraged discussed that once I became music director says of the organ, “it is the world’s oldest him even if they weren’t always simpatico of an orchestra he would be my first com- synthesizer. Indeed the organist—like his to his static rhythms. Conservative Juilliard mission,” he says. “We conductors have a modern-day club counterpart, the deejay— was a strange place to get the electronica short shelf life, but composers live forever, is simultaneously perceived as background bug, but Bates did. and I wanted to be remembered for my accompaniment to various activities, and as “Juilliard has this really cool electronic association with him.” The opportunity the invisible hand controlling the choreog- studio,” he says, noting that the facility is came when Moody became resident con- raphy within its belly.” on a more “commercial level” than the ductor of the Phoenix Symphony, which commissioned five young composers to write pieces that would precede Beethoven “ What I do in [ Omnivorous Furniture] is symphonies on concerts. “The references to in-between a live performer and a technician,” says Bates. “ I call it a Beethoven,” Moody recalls, “could be obvi- ous or extremely subtle. We picked Mason ‘dynamic tape part.’ Because I really believe that it’s important for any to write the companion piece to Beet- electronic element to have a life to it.” hoven’s Ninth, and he wrote Ode .” Cleverly, Ode ends with the same quiet tremolo fifth, A Curious Genesis You might assume that Bates was a pop musician who tried his hand at classical, but actually it was the opposite: He loved classical music in high school and came to electronica only later. Growing up in cul- turally conservative Virginia, Bates studied composition with Dika Newlin, the formi- dable composer and musicologist who’s a leading authority on Austrian music from Bruckner through Webern, and who was teaching at Virginia Commonwealth Uni- versity. At fifteen he came to the attention of Robert Moody, then chorus master of the Brevard Music Center Festival. Bates Bates appeared out front with conductor Alexander Mickelthwate and the Los Angeles Philharmonic was in the chorus, and as Moody recalls New Music Group after performing as “electronica soloist”in his Omnivorous Furniture last season. today, “He had written an a cappella choral work, and came to me and asked, ‘Would you be interested in taking a look at it?’ It Center for New Music and Audio - A and E, with which the Ninth Symphony was a piece on the Latin text ‘Timor et logies at Berkeley, where he now studies. “It opens. tremor.’ As soon as I saw it, I realized what was a huge room with all this equipment, Bates’s first attempt to mix his worlds was a talent he was.” Moody requested a work empty all the time.” Bates took advantage a synthesizer concerto that he played with from Bates for another group he was direct- of that, and he also soon found himself the of Atlanta and Phoenix. ing, the Evansville Philharmonic Youth soloing in the Lower East Side’s simmering Wilder and more ambitious was his piece Orchestra, and received Free Variations for electronica scene. After graduation he Omnivorous Furniture , premiered in Nov- orchestra. headed for Berkeley, and started calling ember 2004 by the Los Angeles Philhar- Such a premiere for a seventeen-year-old himself DJ Masonic. With Corigliano and monic New Music Group. Bates was one of helped propel the young composer to Del Tredici as mentors, he won the Rome the composers included in a composer-con- Juilliard—and to the culture shock of New Prize and Berlin Prize in quick succession, ductor symposium sponsored by the orch- York. Still afraid to commit fully to a musi- and participated in the electronica worlds estra. As Edward Yim, the Philharmonic’s cal career, Bates enrolled in the Columbia- of both cities, the latter especially known as then-director of artistic planning, recalls, Juilliard program, simultaneously earning a hotbed of technopop. Recently back Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen “saw a

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lot of promise in his work. It made such a great impression that His active career as a we wanted to be involved with the club performer has development of his career. It’s taken Bates from such exciting to see a young composer venues as the San combining craftsmanship and Francisco Museum of taking the tradition in new direc- Modern Art… tions.” Omnivorous Furniture had Bates sitting in the percussion sec- tion playing a drum machine, a concerto soloist buried in the back. The orchestra part looks and sounds as though it was written by “orchestrating” the drum machine groove, with dramatic bass lines in the piano and repeating staccato interjections in the strings. Meanwhile, the electronica part (“I think of it as a super percus- sion section that can do any- thing,” he says) is carefully notat- r

ed—after he figures out what he’s Geie basically going to play—but is not e Jami carefully followed in performance. Dancing with Orchestras The piece will receive its New …to Berlin’s Meanwhile Moody, recently named music York premiere March 17 by the Zu Mir Oder Zu Dir director of the Winston-Salem Symphony, American Composers Orchestra. (My Place or Yours). has commissioned another Bates opus: “The point of the notation is to , for orchestra and have something there that the per- electronica. “Since he’s from Virginia, and former can look at,” he explains. this is a piece for Winston-Salem,” Moody “There’s a lot going on in the elec- says, “he started thinking about life in the tronica, and it’s not assumed that Appalachians, and camping, and the the performer will be following sounds you hear when you’re camping. He’s along, but it is assumed that there trying to capture the quality of ambient will be moments where the Lautenschläger sound that exists in the Carolina moun- Max orchestra will line up with the beat. What I that not all new music sounds the same,” tains. ‘Rusty’ doesn’t mean corroded in this do is in-between a live performer and a says the orchestra’s music director, Scott case, but refers to the color of the sound. technician. I call it a ‘dynamic tape part.’ Speck. “We have found three young com- He’ll be in the percussion section running Because I really believe that it’s important posers with compelling musical world- the electronic side of things. He told me to for any electronic element to have a life to views, each of whom is completely differ- trust him, and I do.” it. That way if there’s an alignment prob- ent from the others.” What separates Bates from a lot of other lem, I can kind of help things out electron- Christina Littlejohn, Mobile’s CEO from would-be crossovers is his authenticity in ically. It so happens that with this kind of 1995 until February 2006, elaborates. “Ma- both fields. He and I discuss a couple of music, a click-track isn’t necessary, because son’s music is edgier, interesting in terms of other classical composers who have notably the beat is a click-track in itself.” its form and instruments. We wanted to introduced pop beats into orchestra music, At this writing, Bates, along with Kenji highlight our percussion ensemble, and and Bates’s diagnosis of them is dead-on: Bunch and Kevin Puts, is in the initial thought Mason’s music was perfect for that. Not knowing electronica from the inside, stage of a three-year Music Alive residen- We also do a lot of education programs, and they assume the loud 4/4 beat is everything, cy with the Mobile Symphony sponsored Mason is very articulate about his music and and ape only the most commercial aspects by Meet The Composer and the about music in general.” Along with writing of the music. What’s impressive about both American Symphony Orchestra League. a commissioned piece, Bates will work with Omnivorous Furniture and Digital Loom is “Our goal was to show our audience that local third-graders, helping them make their how subtly the rhythm is portrayed, how ‘modern music’ has many different facets, own music score into a video. unobtrusive the grooves are, how long it

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takes to notice that things are repeating. all the time. There are parts in Omnivorous So, fine. Juilliard and Cloud 9 have final- Only someone who has spent night after Furniture and Digital Loom where the ly collaborated to create the pop/classical night mesmerizing dancers in clubs would rhythm becomes a blob, arrhythmic.” That hybrid that we all knew was coming. What know to go to the most interesting kernel of explains why in every Bates piece the do we do with him? Are electronica fans the music and leave the clichés behind. momentum subsides now and then to going to be lured into the concert hall? Are Transferred to the orchestra, the electron- make room for an expansive lyricism—a orchestra patrons going to wave their hips ica style results in a kind of postminimal- reminder, perhaps, that his background to the drum machine? “It is two audiences,” ism, not all that different from a lot of includes studies with arch-romanticist Bates readily admits, “and it’s not like they other, slightly older composers who were Corigliano. have any overlap. But I’ve found that peo- deeply impressed by minimalism. One Likewise, Bates steers away from the ple are pretty receptive if you have a clear could name Bates’s fellow San Franciscans more mechanical aspects of electronica. His idea of what you’re doing. The electronica John Adams, Belinda Reynolds, Dan deejay music isn’t as grittily “electronic- audience is very curious. They don’t usually Becker, and Paul Dresher—along with Paul sounding” as similar work by post-rock listen to music with vocals, so it’s a group very attuned to listening to harmony and Bates admits that the most sophisticated texture. The best-case scenario is that you classical fans put up the most resistance to what he’s doing. But he see someone in the concert hall who’s kind of punked out next to someone with blue notes that a lot of orchestra members, after initial skepticism, have hair. But they’re not going to morph into melted into an absorbed interest in how his equipment works. the same person. Tr ying to figure out what this audience wants, or that one, is a recipe Epstein, Mary Jane for madness.” Leach, William Bates admits that the most sophisticated Duckworth, and classical fans put up the most resistance to many others—as what he’s doing, but notes that a lot of composers whose orchestra members, after initial skepticism, music is similarly have melted into an absorbed interest in often gradually self- how his equipment works. Clearly no rap- transformational, prochement is going to happen overnight, with a steady beat and an influx of electronica will bring no and a diatonic pitch miraculous reprieve from box-office ills. language. (One But for now, Bates has developed a practi- might also note that cal means for bridging pop and classical another composer, practices, and has done so with enough Anthony De Ritis, bilingual panache that neither audience has already written a can afford to laugh at the results. He’s cer- concerto for deejay, tainly getting a lot of play: In addition to which the orchestras the Juilliard and ACO gigs, the Mobile of Oakland and Visitors to Bates’s web site are directed to “choose one: electronica / classical.” Symphony will play his Ode on March 11, Hartford have per- the Winston-Salem Symphony will pre- formed.) One thing that’s different about bands like Autechre, Godspeed You Black miere Rusty Air in Carolina on May 21, Bates—and ironically so, given his electron- Emperor!, and Bardo Pond. It’s even and he’s writing a half-hour work with elec- ica background—is that he shies away from grounded in jazz harmony. “It’s important tronica for the National Symphony Orch- a relentless motoric pulse. for me to make something that has a little estra, with a planned premiere in February “I love certain pieces of John Adams,” more animal warmth. This has two ramifi- 2007. Bates may be a genius, a flash in the says Bates, “but his music could be con- cations. One is that I want to use a mix of pan, or just a sign of the times. But I’d ducted by a sequencer. It has zero flexibility acoustic and electronic sound sources. That expect a lot more like him coming around in the rhythm. The temptation is to have a may mean adding [prerecorded samples of] the corner. minimalist piece that pulses along forever. jazz piano or upright bass, so that it has For me, the power of minimalism, or the acoustic warmth. Jazz harmony is a great Kyle Gann is a composer,contemporary-music power of these very static beats, is in what way to bring a little bit of life to something writer,and chair of the music departmentat kind of expectation you create that you can that could otherwise become mechanical. Bard College. His last SYMPHONY article, a play with. When I was working on Omni- The other is that the music needs to be review of two composer biographies,appeared vorous Furniture , I wanted to avoid the trap more lyrical, have a little more dynamic and in the January-February issue. of the rhythm being completely mechanical not be so repetitious.”

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