Mason BATES (b. 1977)
The B-Sides (2009) [21:43]
Liquid Interface (2007) [23:24]
Alternative Energy (2011) [25:57]
San Francisco Symphony/Michael Tilson Thomas
Mason Bates (electronica)
rec. live, Davies Symphony Hall, 2014.
SFS MEDIA 821936-0065-2 SACD [71:23]
Having a performance and recording event like this is every
composer’s dream, and Mason Bates can be well pleased with the results
on this magnificently produced CD. The booklet sums up Bates’s music,
describing him as “a symphonist … [who] employs a huge stylistic
canvas to tell big stories, an approach he appreciates in Beethoven, in concept
albums of the 1960s and 1970s (such as Pink Floyd), and at 1990s Detroit warehouse
parties …” His compositional language integrates “the symphonic
palette with sounds of the digital age.” You can catch a video with
the composer talking about this recording here.
The B-Sides eases us in gently, with its loose-limbed pizzicato cadences,
bustling sweeps from the percussion section and sprinkling of electronic magic
of Broom of the System, the first of five pieces forming a suite
that comments on the “open canvas” of the B-side genre, a musical
space that “is the dark matter where an alternative narrative happens.”
These are elegantly crafted and often highly atmospheric pieces, Bates’s
distinctively American sound lending character to scores in which one can
pick out little hints of Holst and others, the electronics enhancing the spaces
these moments create. Gemini in the Solar Wind uses the recorded
voices of astronauts to set our imaginations alight with images of the precarious
remoteness of an existence in space. Syncopation and swing rhythms emerge
in the following Temescal Noir, while the grand finale, Warehouse
Medicine throws down a heavy beat over which the orchestra is turned
into “a giant analogue synthesizer.”
Bates considers Liquid Interface as his first symphony, and he sees
it as “running with the programmatic idea of the symphony that you could
say begins with Beethoven’s ninth.” This “desire to explore
larger human issues” results in a ‘grand concept’ which
is cinematic in its scope, opening with the fracturing of Antarctic glaciers,
and perhaps furthering a theme of global warming with “plops and drops
of water in the playful Scherzo.” The third movement, Crescent
City opens with an air of mystery but breaks out into big-band jazz which
must be great fun to play, the whole thing culminating in a Malcolm Arnold-a-like
film score passage that presages a jazz intro into a computer-generated Hurricane
Katrina. The final movement is titled On the Wannsee, the “balmy
greenhouse paradise” of that famous lake punctuated by odd sounds of
nature and a slowly swinging beat.
Alternative Energy makes the most of the SACD recorded layer, with
its spatial effects created by speakers arranged around the orchestra. The
narrative of this “energy symphony” is one that takes us from
the hands-on Henry Ford sounds of early technology, through today’s
particle-colliders in an orgy of spinning electronics that breaks down into
an almost cartoonish picture of switches and throbbing machinery. Xinjang
Province, 2112 is “a dark nuclear plant in the near future”
that builds with a kind of jolly menace, and the final movement sets us up
for a Reykjavik, 2222 that has become a steamy jungle, though perhaps
one through which the spirit of Björk still stalks.
My ears have been more tuned to the edgier world of European new music over
the years, though this has always also been informed by a diet of John Adams,
Steve Reich and others from across the Atlantic. Bates’s harmonic world
is one that has grown out of the likes of Aaron Copland, and if you like John
Adams then you are sure to appreciate Mason Bates. This is however a rather
safe enclosure which only teases the boundaries of orchestral music rather
than pushing at them hard as if they are about to tear and unleash worlds
of which you never dreamt. Bates has certain tricks which pop up from time
to time – those cadential pizzicati for one, and you’ll have to
be a fan of perky jazz-inflected orchestral sounds and at times fairly stereotypical
add-ons both in terms of musical idioms and special effects. This is all great
fun however and I hate to be critical in such a subjective arena. If you are
looking for something that breaks out of the perceived fustiness of the dead
composers society then this will have great appeal. There is perhaps a problem
with music which is intended to “address major issues of our time”
but which turns them into a kind of James Bond entertainment, but at least
we are set thinking about such things – not always a given in the good-old
and grand-old of the USA, or quite a few other places for that matter.
Dominy Clements
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