In Friday’s (4/18) Sioux City Journal (Iowa), Ally Karsyn reports on composer Mason Bates and his work The B-Sides, performed by the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra on April 26. “Creative instrumentation comes to the stage with sounds produced by sandpaper blocks, an oil drum, antique typewriter and Apple laptop in an upcoming concert with symphonic composer and electronica artist Mason Bates. ‘There wasn’t much electronica in Virginia where I grew up,’ he said, ‘so I didn’t discover DJing until I went to New York for music school.… Electronica grabbed me as an art form with huge possibility in the concert hall.’ By night, he drops the beat in dance clubs and warehouses as DJ Masonic. But he also brings classical music with touches of techno to symphony orchestras across the country. ‘Mason Bates is one of those composers who gets it and has stretched our ears very effectively with his creative combination of two worlds,’ said Ryan Haskins, [music] director of the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra…. Bates is an artist in residence with the San Francisco Symphony and composer in residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.” He also directs Mercury Soul, a “cross-over project created in collaboration with [conductor] Benjamin Shwartz.”
Posted April 21, 2014
