Mason Bates' LOUNGE REGIME: 100 YEARS OF AMBIENT MUSIC to Play the Kennedy Center, 11/9

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts today announced details for LOUNGE REGIME: 100 YEARS OF AMBIENT MUSIC on Monday, November 9, 2015 at 8 p.m. in the Kennedy Center Nations Gallery and Atrium. LOUNGE REGIME is the first performance in the Kennedy Center's new contemporary music series KC Jukebox, curated by new Composer-In- Residence Mason Bates.

LOUNGE REGIME will take listeners on an immersive journey through a century of ambient music, presented in three different period-appropriate lounges complemented by evocative lighting and unique stagecraft and with full-service cash bars. One specialty cocktail-an absinthe concoction evocative of 1920s Paris-is free with every ticket. First, patrons will enter a lounge space featuring modern ambient electronica, including compositions by Aphex Twin, Brian Eno, Mouse on Mars, and other artists, spun by DJ Masonic (Mason Bates) and DJ Justin Reed. Next, attendees will transition to a lounge highlighting 1970s minimalism, featuring the work of iconoclasts Steve Reich and La Monte Young. Finally, listeners will move into a large space evoking the "furniture music" of Paris salons of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Works by Erik Satie, Pierre Schaeffer, and Francis Poulenc will be performed. To conclude the evening, guests can attend an after-party featuring DJ entertainment and a cash bar.

Using a mix of cutting-edge technology, evocative lighting elements, and dynamic electro- acoustic palettes-and bringing together forward-thinking instrumentalists, vocalists, and DJs from Washington and beyond-KC Jukebox spotlights the works of living composers as filtered through Mason Bates's signature re-imagining of the classical music experience. The KC Jukebox series continues with two events later in the season.

In Of Land & Sea on Monday, February 22, 2016, imaginative music inspired by geography is brought to life by a wide diversity of ensembles-from Kevin Puts's colorful Seven Seascapes to renowned local composer Christopher Rouse's Ku-Ka-Ilimoku, a percussive quartet evoking Hawaii. Also on the program is Mason Bates's Red River, which uses an immersive electro- acoustic ensemble to trace the journey of the great Colorado River through the American Southwest, and an electronic work by 2014 Pulitzer Prize winner John Luther Adams.

And New Voices, Old Muses on Monday, April 18, 2016, features innovative responses to old forms, poetry from the distant past, and ancient instruments. The event includes large-scale vocal works by Donnacha Dennehy and Anna Clyne, two leading lights in new music. That the Night Come, Dennehy's song cycle on the poetry of W.B. Yeats, is complemented by As Sudden Shut, Clyne's response to Emily Dickinson. The program also includes Edmund Finnis's In Situ, which offers a striking response to composers long past, while other music, including one of Mason Bates's own works, uses electronic sounds to offer a 21st-century perspective on 18th-century forms.

Mason Bates and his work will be spotlighted in other areas of the Kennedy Center during the 2015-2016 season. Bates's popular masterwork Mothership will be performed by the National Symphony Orchestra December 3-5, 2015 in the Concert Hall, conducted by Sarah Hicks. The December 4 performance will be presented as part of the NSO's new DECLASSIFIED: Fridays at 9 series. On March 5, 2016 in the Crossroads Club, he will join with Kennedy Center Artistic Director for Jazz Jason Moran and Moran's group The Bandwagon for a special electric jazz program called Jason + Mason. Anne Akiko Meyers will perform one of Bates's violin concertos along with NSO April 14-16, 2016 in the Concert Hall, with the April 15 performance also part of the DECLASSIFIED: Fridays at 9 series.

LOUNGE REGIME: 100 YEARS OF AMBIENT MUSIC takes place on Monday, November 9 at 8 p.m. in the Kennedy Center Nations Gallery and Atrium. Tickets are $20 and are on sale now at the Kennedy Center box office, by calling Instant Charge at (202) 467-4600, or through the Kennedy Center website.

ABOUT MASON BATES - Mason Bates joins the Kennedy Center in the 2015-2016 season as its first Composer-In-Residence. A contemporary composer grounded in both the fundamentals of classical music and electronica, he tackles broad, creative themes, moving the orchestra into the digital age and dissolving the boundaries of traditional symphonic music. His award-winning compositions combine an expanded orchestral palette, often including electronic sounds with large-scale, imaginative narrative forms that incorporate topics ranging from earthquakes to energy.

Frequently performed by orchestras large and small, his symphonic music has received widespread acclaim and is championed by leading conductors such as Michael Tilson Thomas, Riccardo Muti, and Leonard Slatkin. In 2012 he was awarded the Heinz Award in the Arts and Humanities, and in 2014 was named the second most-performed living composer by symphony orchestras.

Mason Bates moves fluidly between two distinct musical worlds, with one foot in prestigious symphony halls and the other in late-night dance clubs, where he deejays. He brings these two worlds together not only with his electro-acoustic compositions, but also through his efforts to introduce new music to new venues. His classical/club project, Mercury Soul, integrates classical performances into an evening of DJing in alternative spaces and has attracted large crowds to events created for the Chicago, San Francisco, and New World Symphonies.

Bringing classical music to new audiences is a central part of Bates' activities as a curator. With composer Anna Clyne, he has transformed the Chicago Symphony's MusicNOW series into an imaginative concert experience, drawing huge audiences with cinematic program notes and immersive stagecraft.

Bates recently served as the Mead Composer-In-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which in 2012 performed his Alternative Energy under Riccardo Muti on the opening night of Carnegie Hall's fall season. He also maintains deep relationships with the San Francisco Symphony, which recently completed a three-week Beethoven and Bates Festival; and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, where he recently served as Composer of the Year.

Mason Bates was raised in neighboring Virginia, and his early musical education was shaped by frequent visits to the Kennedy Center. With the future in mind, he looks to continue expanding his musical contributions and explore composition in the realms of theater, opera, and film.

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