This is ‘The Spotlight.’ Many artists pass through D.C. on a weekly basis, but this column highlights one specific artist/group who happens to be playing in the District within the coming week. That way, you may join their journey in influencing the electronic music landscape.
For this week’s Spotlight interview, we had the chance to speak with Mason Bates ahead of his Of Land & Sea show at the Kennedy Center this coming Monday. For his innovative combination of techno, orchestral writing, narrative forms, and jazz in his music, Bates has established himself as one of the foremost composers of our time. Among Bates’ list of accomplishments is becoming Kennedy Center’s composer-in-residence, co-founding a post-classical rave series called Mercury Soul, and being named the second most-performed living composer. Watch a description and performance of Bates’ work “Mothership” and listen to his piece “Red River” before reading the interview – “Red River” will be featured in Of Land & Sea.
PB: On your website, you describe your music as a fusion of “… innovative orchestral writing, imaginative narrative forms, the harmonies of jazz and the rhythms of techno …†and on your Facebook page, you describe your genre as Classical / Electronica. You were recently named the second most-performed living composer. You are doing impressive and innovative work. How did you become the artist you are today? What musical training did you receive? Whose music influences you? Has anyone or anything else influenced you? This could be an important person in your life, a city or community that shaped you as an artist, or a piece of artwork that inspired you.
MB: My early musical influences ranged from the psychedelic rock of Pink Floyd to my father’s big band jazz records, which played in an endless loop in his man cave. The choral director at St Christopher’s School in Richmond, Hope Armstrong Erb, identified my passion for composing and mentored me through several choral works. Those pieces caught the attention of a young conductor who commissioned my first orchestral work while I was still in high school, propelling me to Juilliard. Once in New York, I encountered an entirely new musical ecosystem, and I gravitated to the intricate rhythms and textures of the electronica that was being DJ’d on the Lower East Side. Soon enough I was DJing my own sets, and when I moved to the West Coast, I found a teeming electronica scene in San Francisco – where the tech boom created a vast number of spaces supporting DJs and EDM.
Formative electronic influences include Mouse on Mars, Kraftwerk, and Aphex Twin; classical composers I admire are Hector Berlioz, John Corigliano, George Gershwin, and Francis Poulenc; and my favorite jazz ensemble is Medeski, Martin, & Wood.
PB: What aspects of electronica do you try to incorporate into your work? What do you draw from classical music? Do you primarily consider yourself a DJ/Producer, a composer, or something else?
MB: My early forays into electro-acoustic symphonic music focused primarily on the rhythmic aspects of techno. But I soon realized that I could put anything in the electronics, from recordings of glaciers calving to a NASA spacewalk. I’ve used field recordings from the deep South as well as from the particle accelerator FermiLab. Incorporating this kind of content into a symphony is, to me, a descendant of the earliest use of content in a symphony, the chorale in Beethoven’s 9th. Before that, no one had used text with an orchestra. I am always struck by Beethoven’s hunger to expand the symphonic palette.
PB: Classical performances attract a different demographic than DJ shows – a DJ at clubs such as U Street Music Hall (U Hall) typically brings in a younger crowd than a group of classical musicians at the Kennedy Center. Furthermore, classical performance attendees have a different mindset than U Hall patrons. When you go to a U Hall show, it’s acceptable to dance, wear casual attire, drink copious amounts of alcohol if you desire, and clap, whistle, or even chant the DJ’s name; in contrast, Kennedy Center regulars are more refined. Have you found your target audience? If so, how would you describe your typical fan (age range, socioeconomic status, etc.)? Have you met any challenges in finding your target audience? Are there any demographics who aren’t aware of your music that you’d like to reach? If so, who are these people and what is your strategy for reaching them?  Has incorporating elements of electronica and DJing with classical music helped you attract a wider audience than classical composers who do not use electronica or DJing in their compositions/performances?
MB: For me, the impulse to integrate electronica into the orchestra has been purely on a musical level. I still vividly remember the revelation that hit me one night when DJing at a San Francisco club. I had been composing a piece for the Phoenix Symphony earlier that day, yet as I looked out from the DJ booth in the midst of a three hour set, I realized that what attracted me to both of these musics was their non-vocal nature. Despite the cultural differences between club and concert hall, classical music and electronica share a focus on texture, sonority, rhythm, and harmony. Neither feature a lead singer, lyrics, and melody, so those other musical elements have to step up. Someone who’s drawn to the elaborate, ear-tingling textures of electronica has the ears to appreciate the world’s greatest synthesizer, the orchestra.
PB: You are [or were] involved with many projects across the country, from your post-classical rave, Mercury Soul, to your work with members of the San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Chicago Symphonies. What collaboration or project do you feel contributed the most to music and how? Which of your collaborations/projects is most important to you and why?
MB: In a sense, composing and curating grow from the same seed. When I write a piece of music, I am shepherding an idea from my head through the vast ‘art machine’ known as the orchestra – a beautiful giant instrument, but one replete with rules and traditions that one has to navigate. When I curate a concert at an institution like the Kennedy Center, I guide an idea through the limitations of spaces and budgets. So while my primary artistic focus is in creating new works for orchestra, I very much value the chance to present imaginative events in partnership with institutions.
PB: Please tell us more about Mercury Soul. What goes down at these post-classical raves? Who normally attends them? Are your raves as wild as your typical warehouse rave or are they slightly toned down? How did you meet the other collaborators on this project, Benjamin Shwartz and Anne Patterson? What was each of your roles? What inspired Mercury Soul and how did the idea come about? What plans do you have for Mercury Soul and when/where is the next show?
MB: Mercury Soul visits a club show with a SWAT team of classical musicians, dropping them around the space throughout the night with high production and through-composed interludes. We’ve always been fortunate to have a mixed crowd of club goers, symphony fans, and walk-ins. The crowd will be grooving to thumping DJ sets when, very gradually, a string quartet might appear on a platform in the middle of the space. String quartet and DJ play together in the ‘mercury interlude’ while the crowd starts to pay attention, and then the quartet launches into a piece by Mendelssohn or Stravinsky.  Right when the crowd has reached its maximum focus, the tension releases when the DJ returns. At Mercury Soul, we bring the deep experience of classical music to a new generation, and that includes free shows for high school students before the main event.
PB: What do you have in store for us at Of Land & Sea, the second installment of the KC Jukebox series on February 22 in the Kennedy Center Theater Lab? What are you most excited about for this show? What makes this show different from your other productions?
MB: We’ve got a great show coming up. This event focuses on composers who respond to geography, from the Alaska tundra (John Luther Adams) to the jungles of Hawaii (Christopher Rouse), from the wilds of Peru (Gabriela Frank) to the mountains of Colorado (my own Red River).  In keeping with Jukebox’s inclusion of thematic social hangs in all our concerts, the event spills out into a kind of “post-party eco-system.”  You’ll hear DJ Moose (Daniel Muisi) spinning world beats amidst an evolving backdrop of imagery from the concert’s environs. There’s no better way to spend your Monday night!
PB: Thank you for your time. We look forward to seeing you at the Kennedy Center for Of Land & Sea this coming Monday (February 22).