COMPOSER & LIBRETTIST

Composer of the Grammy-winning opera The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, Mason Bates is imaginatively connecting the worlds of opera, film, orchestras, and DJing. His work spans major venues such as the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where he was appointed that company’s first composer-in-residence, to The Metropolitan Opera, which commissioned The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Bates has also composed for film, scoring Gus Van Sant’s The Sea of Trees starring Matthew McConaughey and Naomi Watts.

Championed by conductors from Riccardo Muti to Michael Tilson Thomas, his symphonic music is the first to receive widespread acceptance for its unique integration of electronic sounds, and a recent survey named him the 2nd most-performed living composer. His interest in integrating classical music into the digital age has continued with Philharmonia Fantastique: The Making of the Orchestra, an animated film with live orchestra for which he composed the score and served as executive producer. The film, with a Grammy-winning soundtrack, was released in the fall of 2022 on Apple TV and can be seen live in concert around the world.

Working in clubs as DJ Masonic, Bates is Artistic Director of Mercury Soul, an organization producing immersive fusions of DJs and classical music in clubs around the country. He serves on the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

The Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award winning operas of librettist/lyricist Mark Campbell are among the most successful in the contemporary canon. A prolific writer, Mark has created 40 opera librettos, lyrics for 7 musicals, and the text for 9 song cycles and 4 oratorios.

Campbell’s best- known work is Silent Night, which received the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Music and has already entered the standard operatic repertory. Other successful operas include Elizabeth Cree, Some Light Emerges, Dinner at Eight, The Nefarious, Immoral but Highly Profitable Enterprise of Mr. Burke & Mr. Hare, The Shining, Later the Same Evening, Volpone, Bastianello/ Lucrezia, Rappahannock County, The Manchurian Candidate, As One, and The Shining.

Mark has received many other prestigious prizes for his work, including the first Kleban Foundation Award for Lyricist, three Grammy nominations (one winning) for Best Classical Recording, two Richard Rodgers Awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, three Drama Desk nominations, a Jonathan Larson Foundation Award, a New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting Fellowship, the first Dominic J. Pelliciotti Award, and a grant from the New York State Council of the Arts.