By day, Mason Bates is an award-winning classical composer. By night, he turns into Masonic, an electronica artist and DJ.

Classical composers have been drawing on popular dance forms since
the time of Bach and even earlier. Nevertheless, according to the SFGate, “Oakland composer Mason Bates can still catch a listener off guard. It’s surprising to hear these two musical strains engaging in friendly but somewhat prickly dialogue, and even more remarkable to hear the trick managed with the kind of sophistication and urgency that Bates brings to it.”

For Bates, though, nothing could be more natural than bringing the worlds of classical music and electronica into alignment.

“Electronica is one of the few kinds of pop music that’s basically instrumental,” he says. “And because there are no lyrics or sung melody, the ear has to gravitate to other things, like texture or rhythm.

“So the ear that’s listening to electronica is not that different from the ear that’s listening to concert music, even if one of them is an abandoned warehouse in Berlin and one is in the Berlin Philharmonie.”

More information on Bates is available at the Masonic Electronica site.