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Michael Tilson Thomas & San Francisco Symphony Release Mason Bates Album

Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) will release a new album, Mason Bates: Works for Orchestra, featuring Bay Area composer Mason Bates's three largest electro-acoustic orchestral works on the Orchestra's SFS Media label on Friday, March 11, 2016. The first full album of Bates's orchestral works features the first recordings of the SFS-commissioned "The B-Sides" and "Liquid Interface," in addition to "Alternative Energy."

Michael Tilson Thomas and the SFS have long promoted Bates' works for over a decade; "The B-Sides" "Liquid Interface" and "Alternative Energy" off their new album, Mason Bates: Works for Orchestra, illustrate Bates's exuberantly inventive music that expands the symphonic palette with sounds of the digital age: techno, drum 'n' bass, field recordings and more, with the composer performing on electronica.

In a press release promoting the release of the Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, Mason Bates expressed his absolute delight with their making it onto the album:

"The three pieces on this album are my largest electro-acoustic works, my wildest explorations into the power of an expanded symphonic palette and its implications for imaginative new forms.

"The sounds range from glaciers to industrial techno to a NASA spacewalk. New sounds have often provoked new forms throughout music history...and I look to the digital world as an important twenty-first century expansion of the orchestral sound world.

"Michael has been a tremendous mentor over the years, always challenging me with obscure listening assignments and, often, actual composition assignments ("The B-sides" as a response to Schoenberg's "Five Pieces for Orchestra" for example)...The San Francisco Symphony continues to be my window into the limitless possibilities of an orchestra."

Mason Bates: Works for Orchestra will be available March 11, with the album already being made available for pre-order through iTunes and Amazon.

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