The world premiere of Mason’s Whalesong, performed by Southbank Sinfonia, conducted by Kwamé Ryan, will be broadcast on BBC iPlayer at 9am BST on September 10, 2022.
Whalesong was performed at The Royal Albert Hall for the BBC Proms on July 23, 2022, and celebrates the majesty and power of Earth’s largest animals. The piece integrates recordings of whalesong into a symphonic narrative about a lone whale, represented by a solitary horn in the opening, that ultimately reunites with its pod in the soaring finale. Whalesong is dedicated to Sir David Attenborough in admiration for his lifelong efforts to help us better understand the natural world.
On May 6th, The Atlanta Opera will livestream Mason Bates’ new production of his Grammy-winning Opera, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs on Spotlight Media, conducted by Michael Christie and directed by Tomer Zvulun.
The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs is an opera in one act, with music by Mason Bates and libretto by Mark Campbell. Following the success of the original production by Seattle Opera, San Francisco Opera and Indiana University, this new production is co-produced by The Atlanta Opera, Austin Opera and Lyric Opera of Kansas City.
In the pantheon of iconic figures, very few continue to grow in influence after their death. Whether you love him or hate him, Steve Jobs made such an enduring impact on our culture that his impact has only increased since his untimely death in 2010.
His legacy reaches across industries and counties. His ‘simplicity first’ design ethos has made sleek interfaces a requirement for everything from tablets to Teslas. His fusion of creativity and technology is continuously showcased in animated films from Pixar, which he created. His cold managerial style and lack of philanthropy created a dangerous ‘genius monarchist’ model for today’s tech CEOs.
The continuing fascination with Jobs is on my mind as my opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs receives its second production in a half a dozen cities this season and next. It opens this week at Austin Opera under the direction of Tomer Zvulin, who has created a stunning reimagination of the work.
A new production means new sets, costumes, lighting and projection design – in short, new everything. The original production at Santa Fe Opera featured an ingenious ‘monoliths’ resembling enormous iPods that continuously moved around the stage. Illuminated from within and projected on like canvases, they could stack close together and resemble the four walls of Jobs’ garage, or could fly apart and become an outdoor wedding at Yosemite. This design element was the stroke of genius that guided the first production, but not every opera house can handle the crew and technical requirements of flying monoliths.
So Tomer and production designer Jacob Climer created a new multilevel set, emblazoned with dozens of flatscreens, that opens to reveal a second hidden world upstage. Animated by brilliant projection design of Katy Tucker, the set fluidly morphs into an apple orchard or Apple headquarters – and many things in between. It has an abstraction to it that emphasizes the sense that the entire opera is a sequence of memories in the mind of Jobs on his deathbed.
The Austin Opera Orchestra sounds superb under the direction of Timothy Meyers. He makes the propulsive surfaces of the opera glisten with excitement while, in the work’s last third, pulling back to let the lyricism open up. At the end, the opera shifts focus to Lauren Powell Jobs, who’s warmth brings a crucial humanity to the story. Her final aria “Look Up, Look Out” is a plea for everyone to look away from devices and strive for true connection.
Baritone John Moore so vividly creates the lead role that, by the end, you will be half-certain you are witnessing the man himself. From hippie to mogul to, tragically, a man almost unable to stand, Steve Jobs is conjured by John Moore in a superb tour-de-force. Mezzo Sarah Larsen brings to life the strong independence of Laurene, and Madison Leonard reprises the role of Chrisann with both innocence and sadness. Bass Wei Wu has created the role of Kobun, the Buddhist spiritual advisor to Jobs, from the world premiere, and he absolutely owns this important role. New to the Steve Jobs family is tenor Bille Bruley, who beautifully portrays the everyman Steve Wozniak.
I’m often amused to see the surprised look on someone’s face when hearing about the opera for the first first. “An opera about Steve Jobs?!” A technologist clad in black turtlenecks and sneakers doesn’t initially seem like a natural subject for opera, which to the general public is noble medium populated by romantics. But the story of Steve Jobs is full of passion, obsession, love, betrayal, and tragedy that is the stuff of opera – and as this new production begins its life, I hope you get a chance to see it.
How to separate the dancer from the dance? In the case of Yo-Yo Ma, it’s simply impossible to differentiate between the stunning sounds he creates with his cello and the extraordinary human being holding the instrument. Asked to create a new recital piece for him to be premiered this month in San Francisco, I thought about both the musician and the man as I composed Hymn for the Future.
The piece is inspired by the starry-sky photograph on the cover of Yo-Yo Ma’s latest release, Notes for the Future, which offers tributes to the next generation in a diversity of styles. The album’s aesthetic range of the album spans from classical to hip-hop and much in between, and the soundworld is equally rich – with electronic beats and imaginative production weaving around Yo-Yo’s playing.
Equally important is the humanistic impulse behind the album. Anyone who encounters Yo-Yo knows he has a passionate belief in the power of music to bridge cultures and transcend differences. In contrast to the tone of much of the conversation on this topic today, Yo-Yo speaks in a positive and aspirational way. And he does this with the highest musical integrity: few artists in any medium have crossed aesthetic boundaries so substantively. His collaborations with everyone from Bobby McFerrin to Edgar Meyer have elevated all sides of the equation.
Paying homage to the humanistic sentiment behind the musician, I created a soulful electro-acoustic hymn that conjures the artist amidst a magnificent celestial backdrop, dreaming of hopeful days ahead. I’ll be performing the piano part on Hymn for the Future when it premieres on November 13 at the new Bowes Center in San Francisco.
There came a moment last year when composing music seemed almost impossible. With no live performances to inspire me and a lockdown-induced melancholic tinge, my normally hyperactive creative spirit lay dormant. But 2021 brought new hope and the return of audiences, little by little, and today I’m grateful to look ahead to a season packed with new projects and long-delayed performances. Here’s a flyover of my activities over the next nine months, with premieres ranging from symphonic to film to opera in cities from San Francisco to to London to Israel.
Philharmonia Fantastique
Inspired by a desire to offer my own kids a fresh guide to the orchestra, Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra premieres this season in a variety of cities. The animated film and score was created to inhabit a popular and relatively recent format: orchestras playing underneath giant movie screens. ‘Live-to-film’ shows generally happen with blockbuster films, but it’s time the format includes something written specifically for it. This 25-minute journey features a magical Sprite flying inside instruments to see how they work, and it was created with director Gary Rydstrom and animator Jim Capobianco during visits to Skywalker Ranch.
Sometimes accompanying me to the Ranch were my kids and a posse of their friends, playing the role of a slightly suspicious focus group. They responded best to an exuberant piece of art, not a didactic piece of pedagogy, that has elements of mystery and darkness. Equally important is the Sprite, whose journey of self-discovery brings a crucial emotional angle to the story.
With their extensive film experience – Gary won Oscars for his dinosaur sounds in Jurassic Park, Jim wrote the story for Pixar’s Ratatouille – they helped solve many of the film’s unique puzzles: namely, how to introduce the many facets of the orchestra without using words.
The work lifts off with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in October, then in the spring with the Chicago and NationalSymphonies with San Francisco and Pittsburgh performing it next season.
Piano Concerto
Very often I’m asked if, as a symphonic composer, I play all the instruments in the orchestra. I wish I could – but so far, the only instrument I’ve seriously studied is piano. My first compositions poured forth as piano rhapsodies, and the instrument forever holds a special place in me. So it’s been incredibly exciting to write a piano concerto over the past year, and writing for the superb Daniil Trifonov has been an inspiration.
Daniil rose to fame with the giant repertoire of his fellow Russians, but he’s since presented a huge variety of recordings in many styles. The title of his Grammy-winning album Transcendental is the perfect word to describe Daniil, whose delicate tone and old-soul phrasing stand out in a field packed more with technicians than musicians. I’ve written a piece that travels through eras, with a Baroque-inspired opening movement giving way to a more Romantic middle movement before ultimately exploding in a finale that could only have been written today.
The Philadelphia Orchestra premieres the work in January, with additional performances in New Jersey, Israel, and San Francisco Symphony in the spring (the latter also commissioned the work), and in Europe.
photo credit: Astrid Ackermann
New Production of The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs
The oracle of Apple has continued to fascinate over a decade after his early death. Yet being the charismatic visionary who uniquely understood the intersection of creativity and technology, Jobs was persecuted by an inability to treat people as little more than machines. Exploring this iconic figure, The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs opened at Santa Fe Opera to such strong demand that extra performances were added, and the work traveled to several other cities before winning the Grammy in 2019.
Now the opera returns to at least a half-dozen cities in a brand new production under the direction Tomer Zukin. Opera houses in Austin, Atlanta, and Kansas City lead a growing list that now includes Opera Utah and Calgary Opera. The new production features a vibrant new set that zips us through the fast-paced opera’s many settings and times.
Bootlegger’s Break in Miami
Concert bands – orchestras without strings and tons brass, winds, and percussion – have continued to perform many of my works over the years. But it’s been only rare occasions when I’ve written specifically for this marvelous medium. One of the leading ensembles I’ve worked with over the years is the Frost Ensemble at the University of Miami (pictured, left)led by conductor Robert Carnachan, and I’m excited to be composing a lightning-fast opener to be premiered by the Frost this spring.
Bootlegger’s Break is a quicksilver opener driven by the soul of Lee Petty, a famous Prohibition-era getaway driver (his son Richard Petty channeled those skills into NASCAR). It has equal parts big-band-era energy and bluesy nods to Petty’s southern roots, with a great deal of inspiration coming from the big-band music that constantly emanates from my father’s man-cave. Stan Kenton, Artie Shaw, Glenn Gray: these masters of large ensembles are rarely heard today. It’s not often I get to write for many saxophones and horns, with a half-dozen percussionists backing them up: the ‘break’ of the title refers both to escapes and drum breaks).
Beyond these premieres, there are many exciting performances of earlier works, such as Liquid Interface – which will be given its UK premiere by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner at Royal Festival Hall. With the world gradually opening back up to live music, it will be so exciting to attend many of these performances in so many parts of the world.
The birth of a new concert hall occurs so rarely that it always calls for special celebration and, often, a new work to christen it. When the San Diego Symphony unveiled its architectural masterpiece The Shell, they invited me to compose a piece to show off the new space, the superb orchestra, and the cutting edge sound system.
Soundcheck in C Major is a fanfare animated by sonic effects. The opening shimmering chords echo electronically and then fly over the audience, tentatively testing the concert hall, before the orchestra builds to a resonant unison. A resolute march ensues and then evolves into a quicksilver passage showcasing solo players, before soon building back triumphantly to the opening sonorities.
This short work is equally informed by the textural brilliance of Wagnerian overtures, the psychedelic sound design of Pink Floyd, and the famous THX ‘sound test’ that once kicked off many a night at the movies.
Driving to Skywalker Ranch has become a regular pilgrimage over the past two years. The country roads north of San Francisco become ever windier the closer you get to the ranch, which was built thirty years ago by George Lucas as an idyllic creative campus.
I’ve used these country drives to plan the work to be done that day, thinking through the sound design of Alternative Energy, Mass Transmission, and Art of War during visits over the past ten years to mentor under Gary Rydstrom, the leading sound designer at Skywalker Sound.
Most recently, my visits to the Ranch have been about Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra, an animated film the journeys inside instruments as they’re played. Early in the project, Gary and I storyboarded the film with animation director Jim Capobianco. Then we’d gather there to consider the musical score, the art, the motion graphics, and various other elements of the film.
The last step, the topic of this column, is mixing the symphonic score.
That’s how I ended up in the room with two of Hollywood’s best sets of ears. Gary is a legendary sound designer, having one seven Oscars for his work on Spielberg films; and to handle the mix, he brought in Shawn Murphy, who mixes all the John Williams scores.
To sit at the mixing board between these legendary listeners is quite an experience. When not figuring out how to bring out a particular instrument in the mix or accentuate a piece of sound design, Gary and Shawn reminisce so casually about mind-blowing projects (last month, it was about the upcoming Spielberg remake of West Side Story). For this project, we were mixing the studio recording of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra made the month before (see the previous column about the magic of recording an orchestra during Covid).
So, what happens at ‘the mix’?
The mix is when all sonic elements are brought together. For a pure audio release, such as my opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, that means integrating all the various microphones – close on individual instruments, singes, section mics, room mics. My music also comes with electronic beats and sound design, so these mixes are complex beasts. But an audio release only requires one mix – the CD or digital album.
For Philharmonia Fantastique, we need both an album mix and a film mix. That’s because people often listen to an album and a film on different systems, and because a film requires a more dynamic mix than a traditional audio album. For example, when the film’s Sprite flies inside the flute, the film mix brings up the close mic on the flute; or when the bassoon fills the entire screen like an alien spaceship, we add some low subwoofer to accentuate the bassoon’s role as the bass of the woodwind section.
At Skywalker, we mixed on the main mix stage, with Shawn and I at the board, and his assistance Erik in the editing room nearby. Erik is the master of the edit domain, the person we go to when we need to dig up a different take of a particular passage. That mostly happens when there are issues of sync: when a percussion hit isn’t lining up with something in the film, for example.
Philharmonia Fantastique presents very intricate sync issues because it features close-ups of instruments being played as we hear them. So, a year after the film was finished, thousands of miles away in Chicago a bunch of musicians had to perform exactly in sync with the fingers of a flutist. The handful of times things were slightly off, well we just called Erik in the editing room.
We finished the mix on Friday; took a lunch break; and then came back onto the mix stage to experience the film from start to finish. Conductor Edwin Outwater joined us at this point, and we both couldn’t stop smiling at hearing the full orchestra come together.
Coming together, after all, is the key thematic of Philharmonia Fantastique, a celebration of the ways an orchestra unifies its diversity of instruments and people. Perhaps we took for granted how magical an orchestra is before Covid; but now, the majesty of the medium will be especially appreciated.
I drove back through the windy roads of Marin with a smile, tapping the beats of the film’s finale on my steering wheel. Bringing this to life during the past two years has been one of the most fulfilling creative experiences of my life – and I can’t wait for Philharmonia Fantastique to premiere next season.
So many fascinating revelations have occurred while recording Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra this month with Chicago Symphonywith conductor Edwin Outwater. The soundtrack for this 25’ animated film, which journeys inside the orchestra to see how instruments work, is a vivid concerto for orchestra. Recording an orchestra during Covid is no small feat – and a real-world illustration of the film’s key theme: the orchestra as a beautiful example of “coming together.”
All film scores are recorded with a click track – i.e., a metronome – to ensure tight synchronization between music and images. For safety reasons, we’re recording in smaller groups – in this case by instrument families – and then putting everything together in post-production. Our recording engineer Shawn Murphy is a master at this, having just recorded Spielberg’s West Side Story (and several other films) in this manner. The Jedi-knight skills aren’t only required in the studio afterwards; the engineer also needs to set up the sessions so the players are as comfortable as possible.
photo: T. Rosenberg
So Shawn and his assistant Erik Swanson have made it possible, for example, to play back the violins while the low strings record, or play the brass when the woodwinds lay down their parts. That’s crucial for pitch and texture.
While there are obvious challenges to recording in isolation, some advantages have become obvious with this project. Because the film’s Sprite flies inside various instruments as they’re playing, we need some very close mic’ing of specific instruments. (The film’s poster art shows the Sprite inside the cello, for instance.) Spreading out the recording sessions over five days allows us to take the time to capture those close-up sounds.
Additionally, it’s interesting for the cello section to lay down its part without the brass blasting over them, allowing the cellists to really focus on their sound. One possible pitfall is precision obsession: in some orchestral tutti passages, players lean into their instruments more aggressively than they do when isolated. The orchestra rages euphorically at the climax of Philharmonia Fantastique, and we’re encouraging players to add grit to their sound at those moments. The accumulation of those intense instrumental textures are what makes a climax so thrilling.
After a year without orchestras, I found myself overwhelmed with emotion during the first session with violins. Just hearing them tune provoked a visceral emotional reaction; it’s been so long since I’ve heard a section tune. The lack of public discussion about the plight of the performing arts – especially when compared to, say, restaurants – has made the pandemic especially challenging for so many artists. It’s nice to be back with an orchestra I love, finding creative ways to make music again. Let’s hope orchestras look to September 2021 as a time to come back together in big ways. While that may be a challenge, it’s so crucial to the well-being of our collective cultural psyche. Orchestras are defined by the act of coming together, so let’s look to them as we emerge from this long year.
Something remarkable happened this month: a new symphonic piece was actually premiered. Under the baton of Maestra Marin Alsop, the São Paulo Symphony gave the world premiere of Undistant, a lyrical response to the social distancing of the Covid era.
The piece’s life began with a conversation last May between me and Marin, who has brought many pieces of mine to orchestras around the world. She asked if I’d compose something reflective and hopeful, a piece that could celebrate the necessity of true human connection.
Undistant follows a journey of past, present, and future: beginning with the distancing we’ve experienced over the past nine months, it looks towards the return of human contact in the coming year. Scored for chamber orchestra and electronics, the piece opens with the cold sound of digital stutters from communication platforms (Zoom and Skype), then slowly warms up with the bloom of a long melody that shares the first three notes with “Ode to Joy.” (The isolation of Covid seems reminiscent of the isolation of Beethoven’s deafness, and his most famous tune is the ultimate hymn to human fellowship.)
To vividly illustrate the concept of distancing, the piece scatters several of the musicians around the hall: a group of woodwinds in the left balcony, some brass in the right, and the strings and percussion onstage. As the orchestras emerges in a haze of digital static, these three ensembles drift closer and closer together. The work culminates in an ecstatically lyricism, with the digital world (electronics) disappearing.
The very fact that I had to hear the premiere online, sitting in California, enhanced the basic thematic of the piece. Traveling to Brazil was unfortunately out of the question given all the restrictions, but I found the experience of tuning in quite moving. In fact, several years ago the São Paulo Symphony gave the Brazilian premiere of another work of mine exploring distance: Mass Transmission, a choral work, sets transcripts of families speaking over the first long-distance radio signals.
The past year has been especially challenging for orchestras, a medium that is all about people coming together. As a symphonist, I continue to be fascinated by the way orchestras allow so many people to collaborate in real time – but that defining characteristic has kept many orchestras shuttered during Covid. But recent advances in medicine and politics offer real hope in the inevitable return of live music, and that hope is what Undistant is all about.
I just spent a month composing in a 19th Century barn in Virginia. This was a refuge from the plague, protests, political upheaval, and wildfires that pushed my mental health to the brink. Dark days descended in a very literal way: ignited by once-in-a-century lightning storms, California wildfires suffocated the skies with smoke so thick that it felt like night.
Fight or flight? We chose the latter. The very next day my family and I boarded on a near-empty plane clutching a keyboard and guitar.
The Bates farm in King & Queen County is not a fancy mink-and-manure outfit like the ones found on the outskirts of Washington DC. It’s a working farm that has been in the family so long, there’s a Bates graveyard full of folks named Thomas Jefferson Bates (an honorific name only).
Working at the first piano I ever played seemed a fitting place to write a new piano concerto. Daniil Trifonov, the Grammy-winning wunderkind-gone-superstar of classical piano, brings an almost mystical vision to his interpretations of Bach, Rachmaninoff, Pärt, and Chopin, and it’s been a joy to write this piece for him and two orchestras close to my heart, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony.
Fortunately, Daniil performs on Steinways that all have a working low Bb, which is busted on my old upright. It’s also so out of tune, you feel like you’re playing in a saloon out of spaghetti Western. But that’s okay. Staying on the farm is always about returning to roots.
The barn is a marvelous place to write. For one thing, it’s separate from my family, whose Zoom calls for school and work dominated the house for six months. I’m a much better composer and family man when I can be solitary when writing.
The barn is also big enough for the obsessive pacing that accompanies my composing. As I walked circles like a caged animal, I listened to a lot of Renaissance madrigals. One goal of this concerto is creating textures so transparent that the beautiful subtleties of Daniil’s playing can be heard. I’m working on a chorale with all manner of delicate ornamentation in the five voices, allowing Daniil to create all manner of colors.
Renaissance music also features a surprising amount of small percussion instruments that intrigue me. Listen to any release by the Italian ensemble Micrologus, and you’ll hear an energetic folk combination of plectrum instruments, tawny winds, and percussion. That’s the opening musical landscape of the concerto.
While I didn’t add many minutes to the concerto while in Virginia, upon returning to California I immediately produced a toccata for the third movement. The sudden productivity was certainly the result of shaking myself out of the listless routine of the past six months. It’s hard to overstate the importance of emotional health on creative output, and for me the change helped enormously.
As we look to a possibly long winter ahead, we should all take extra care to refresh our perspectives. Whether it’s a house rental or a solo backpacking trip, an escape is always welcome.
Driving to Skywalker Ranch has become a regular pilgrimage over the past two years. The country roads north of San Francisco become ever windier the closer you get to the ranch, which was built thirty years ago by George Lucas as an idyllic creative campus.
To sit at the mixing board between these legendary listeners is quite an experience. When not figuring out how to bring out a particular instrument in the mix or accentuate a piece of sound design, Gary and Shawn reminisce so casually about mind-blowing projects (last month, it was about the upcoming Spielberg remake of West Side Story). For this project, we were mixing the studio recording of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra made the month before (see the previous column about the magic of recording an orchestra during Covid).
We finished the mix on Friday; took a lunch break; and then came back onto the mix stage to experience the film from start to finish. Conductor Edwin Outwater joined us at this point, and we both couldn’t stop smiling at hearing the full orchestra come together.
All film scores are recorded with a click track – i.e., a metronome – to ensure tight synchronization between music and images. For safety reasons, we’re recording in smaller groups – in this case by instrument families – and then putting everything together in post-production. Our recording engineer Shawn Murphy is a master at this, having just recorded Spielberg’s West Side Story (and several other films) in this manner. The Jedi-knight skills aren’t only required in the studio afterwards; the engineer also needs to set up the sessions so the players are as comfortable as possible. 
Something remarkable happened this month: a new symphonic piece was actually premiered. Under the baton of Maestra Marin Alsop, the São Paulo Symphony gave the world premiere of Undistant, a lyrical response to the social distancing of the Covid era.
