Coming to the Schermerhorn
Sound and Story: Mason Bates Returns to Nashville with Three Defining Works
Next weekend and at the end of the month, the Nashville Symphony spotlights the music of composer and DJ Mason Bates in two programs that showcase the breadth of his creative voice. From May 1–3, audiences will hear Passage for mezzo-soprano, orchestra & Laptop (featuring soprano Fleur Barron) alongside The Rhapsody of Steve Jobs, followed, May 29–30, by Silicon Hymnal (featuring the ensemble Time for Three). Together, these performances offer the Nashville audience a rare opportunity to encounter multiple works by one of America’s most distinctive contemporary composers, tracing the evolution of a musical language that fuses orchestral tradition with the pulse and texture of electronic sound.
Bates has emerged over the past two decades as a leading figure in contemporary classical music, known for integrating laptop performance, club-inspired rhythms, and imaginative storytelling into symphonic works. Born in Philadelphia and raised in Richmond, Virginia, he studied composition at Columbia University-Julliard School and later at University of California, Berkeley, where his dual interests in classical composition and electronic music began to merge into a distinctive artistic identity. His music has been performed by major orchestras across the United States and abroad, and his work often explores the cultural intersections between technology, narrative, and the American soundscape.
From 2011 to 2018, Bates served as the first Composer-in-Residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a position that helped bring contemporary composition to wider audiences through innovative programming and community engagement. His stage works and orchestral compositions—including the widely performed multimedia symphony Philharmonia Fantastique (which will be heard in Nashville next season)—have demonstrated a flair for theatricality and vivid musical imagery, often drawing on figures from American history, literature, and innovation. In many of his works, electronics function not as novelty but as an organic extension of the orchestra, expanding the palette of color and rhythm available to contemporary composers.
Bates also shares a meaningful artistic history with Nashville. His works have appeared on programs led by both Giancarlo Guerrero and Leonard Slatkin, and his music has become a familiar presence in the city’s concert life over the past decade. That ongoing relationship makes this spring’s programs not only a showcase of individual compositions, but also a continuation of a creative dialogue between composer, orchestra, and community.
In advance of these performances, Bates shared his thoughts with the Music City Review on musical storytelling, the integration of electronics into orchestral sound, and the enduring influence of American voices—from Walt Whitman to John F. Kennedy—that shape his artistic imagination. The following conversation explores the ideas behind these works and the evolving role of technology, narrative, and vernacular sound in the modern concert hall
Music City Review [MCR]: These two approaching Nashville concerts bring together works spanning different phases of your career. When you hear pieces like Silicon Hymnal (May 29-30) Passage and Rhapsody of Steve Jobs (May 1-3), what thread or through-line do you hear in your own musical voice?
Mason Bates [MB]: Musical storytelling has become something of a lost art. 19th Century composers such as Liszt, Berlioz, and Wagner found new harmonies and textures to bring to life imaginative stories. But that approach disappeared with the 20th Century’s move to process-based approaches such as minimalism and serialism. I’m reinvigorating the narrative approach using new sounds and electronica.
MCR: Silicon Hymnal suggests a fascinating confluence of folk or street music, ritual and innovation. How did you imagine the sonic architecture of this work—does it function like a traditional hymn, or something more abstract?
MB: The novel form of this piece was a response to the unique gifts of Time for Three, who can play (and sing) in any style. I landed on a form that would offer a ‘tasting menu’ of different musics at the start in short movements, then dive deeper in the slow movement and finale.
MCR: Passage for mezzo-soprano, orchestra & Laptop, electronics are fully integrated into the orchestral palette. How do you shape the balance between acoustic and digital elements so that neither feels secondary?
MB: The trick is to use the electronica as if it’s another family of the orchestra – ie, to integrate it. The electronic sounds are not present all the time, just like with the percussion for example. It’s critical to remember that the orchestra is the star of the show.
MCR: Across works like Passage and The Rhapsody of Steve Jobs, you draw on figures such as President John F. Kennedy, Walt Whitman, and Steve Jobs—individuals associated with vision, language, cult of personality and innovation. What draws you to these particular voices, and how do their words or legacies shape the musical language of your compositions?
MB: Great question. I do admire the idiosyncratic figures of American history, which seems to create geniuses who can speak in plain language and think outside the box. It astonished me to read lines from Walt Whitman’s Passage to India, celebrating American exploration, that match so closely to JFK’s moonshot speech.
MCR: You have an interesting history with Nashville. As far as I can tell, the first work of yours that was heard in Nashville was your violin concerto performed by the great Anne Akiko Meyers in 2013 and led by our Musical Director Emeritus Giancarlo Guerrero. That work was premiered the year before by our Current Music Director Leonard Slatkin with the Pittsburgh Symphony. Then there was the Nomad Concerto in 2024, also led by Guerrero in Nashville. Of course, there was the Philharmonia Fantastique in 2024 and again next year! Now, Passage and Rhapsody of Steve Jobs will be led by Guerrero, where Slatkin is the Musical Director—the history is dizzying. Comments?
MB: Nashville Symphony has one of the most distinguished legacies in American music. I think this is because the orchestra both responds to Music City, and informs it. The concert hall is an extraordinary creation in itself, and you can recognize it instantly when strolling through the city.
MCR: One of the themes that provides a contrasting statement in the Rhapsody is ‘Look up, Look out,’ (Lauren Powell Jobs’ closing aria, which implores the audience to connect beyond devices). Powell famously cited and warned against the “dark uses” of technology. As a composer who employs technology to a high degree, especially in the emerging age of AI, are there “dark uses” for technology in composition? What use of technology do you warn your composition students against in the 21st century?
MB: Technology needs to be at the service of human ingenuity – not the other way around. Often in the history of classical music when electronics are used – for example, IRCAM institute in France – the result feels so technology-driven. Electronica can be a window into new worlds of sound design and rhythm and texture, but it has to work like a new section of the orchestra – not as an artistic endpoint in itself.
MCR: Recently, there was an exhibition at Cass Contemporary Gallery in Nashville that placed graffiti and street art—forms usually encountered in public, urban spaces—into the quiet, contemplative setting of a gallery. Your work similarly brings DJ and electronic aesthetics, often associated with clubs or the street, into the formal environment of the concert hall. How do you think bringing vernacular or street-rooted art forms into traditionally classical or gallery spaces changes the way audiences experience them?
MB: I love art that engages mind and body simultaneously. Some of the best graffiti art does this, and so does some of the best American music. Gershwin and Bernstein found a way to bring the vernacular into the symphonic space in an original way. That’s one of the things about Nashville that inspires me so much.
As one can tell, at the center of Bates’s work is a renewed commitment to musical storytelling—an impulse that reaches back to the grand narrative traditions of the nineteenth century while embracing the technologies and voices of the present. In the works featured this spring, audiences will encounter stories told through sound: tales of exploration, innovation, ritual, and connection. As Nashville prepares to hear these pieces unfold in performance, listeners can expect not only inventive soundscapes, but a reminder that music, at its best, remains one of the most powerful ways to tell the stories of who we are and where we are going. As for me, I’m going to the Schermerhorn to hear this concert!
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