"Amazing Together": Mason Bates, Classical Music, and Neoliberal Values

Abstract

At a 2014 summit in Las Vegas, the various corporate partners of the multinational technology corporation Cisco Systems met to network and trade ideas.The event was carefully branded, with marketing materials, speeches, and videos all advancing the summit's slogan: "Amazing Together."This slogan was also emphasized during a special performance of the Las Vegas Youth Orchestra, which played briefly for the assembled tech entrepreneurs.The piece the LVYO played was The Rise of Exotic Computing, a sinfonietta for orchestra and laptop by the 37-year-old Mason Bates.Bates, a Juilliard-and Berkeleytrained composer, is a rising star in the world of contemporary classical music; in the 2014/15 season he was the second most performed living composer in America (after John Adams). 1 At the Cisco summit, he briefly introduced his piece, and then took his usual spot behind a laptop.The LVYO played Exotic Computing while surrounded by large screens upon which images and text were projected for the duration of the performance.The screens showed footage of leaping dolphins, naval ships, farmland, assembly lines, spider webs, and outer space, with superimposed animated grids linking it all together and often imposing a sort of teleology on the visuals.In one sequence, the interlocking circles representing a dolphin's use of sonar were transformed into a naval ship's radar bleeps, an image that linked nature and technology.Overlaid on top of these images were segments of text, associating the sounds and visuals with Cisco's corporate slogan: "We are all connected… one universe… one planet… one ecosystem… thriving as one network… working with one purpose… we are amazing together." 2 Cisco had donated money to the LVYO, so the group's performance at the corporate summit served as a demonstration of the company's socially minded endeavors to support not only young people, but also the kind of "high culture" that classical music still represents in the popular consciousness. 3 But the music the LVYO played revealed much more than simply a display of philanthropy; Mason Bates, who was recently named the Kennedy Center's first-ever composer-in-residence, is especially applauded for his incorporation of new technologies into orchestral music.4 Most of his work makes use of drum machines and techno beats, and-as I will discuss below-many of his compositions programmatically uphold the lofty ideals of technological innovation and entrepreneurialism.The Rise of Exotic Computing is built out of tiny motives passed quickly from instrument to instrument.It is meant to aurally depict synthetic This article was updated August 29,

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