Riccardo Muti Conducts Mason Bates and Anna Clyne Chicago Symphony Orchestra & Riccardo Muti

• Anna Clyne (1980): Night Ferry
• 1Night Ferry22:21
• Mason Bates (1977): Alternative Energy
• 2Ford's Farm, 1896—07:31
• 3Chicago, 201205:38
• 4Xianjiang Province, 2112—08:03
• 5Reykjavik, 222204:58
• Total Runtime48:31

Info for Riccardo Muti Conducts Mason Bates and Anna Clyne

Mason Bates‘ futuristic world vision is inherent in the title of his new work, “Alternative Energy.” Anna Clyne sets her “Night Ferry” in a timeless psychological landscape. Both works are unmistakably original in voice. Their latest compositions also show prodigious assimilation of the symphonic past into their respective sound worlds.

Mason Bates wrote the 25-minute “Alternative Energy” for traditional symphony orchestra plus junkyard car parts, recorded sounds from an atomic particle collider and other inventive electronica. He says that he was influenced by the formal device of the recurring theme, or idée fixe, in Hector Berlioz’ 1830 “Symphonie fantastique,” which follows the arc of a doomed love affair and which made a deep impression on Bates when he heard Muti and the CSO perform it in September 2010. Bates traces the arc of a similarly wild and besotted fixation, between mankind and energy itself.

His idea fixe occurs first as a bluesy tune for solo violin that invokes the crank-it-up swagger of carmaker Henry Ford (if not the influence of a certain soldier.) Bates inflates, twists and darkens his theme as he imagines the progress of energy technology through successive centuries — the present-day “crank-up” of Chicago’s massive Fermilab particle collider, the angst-ridden future of China’s nuclear industrial power unleashed, and finally a post-apocalyptic rainforest in Iceland. (Talk about great field trips, Bates went to Skywalker Ranch for some sound-design guidance in compiling the impression of a particle collider revving up.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Riccardo Muti, conductor

Recorded February 2, 3, 4, and 7, 2012 (Bates), and February 9, 10, and 11, 2012 (Clyne), in Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center
Engineered by Christopher Willis
Editing and mixed by David Frost
Mastering by Tim Martyn
Produced by David Frost

CHIC are one of the superpowers of late-’70s disco, a mixed-gender band from New York City that provided some of the biggest and most enduring hits of the Studio 54 era.

Best know for: A pair of epochal #1 pop smashes in “Le Freak” and “Good Times,” as well as club classics like “I Want Your Love,” “Everybody Dance” and “Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah).” “Good Times” in particular has provided one of the great through-threads of the last 30 years of pop music, with its legendary bass line appearing (in various incarnations) in pop songs ranging from Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” to Daft Punk’s “Around the World”—and, most notably, providing the hook for Sugarhill Gang’s “Rappers’ Delight,” the song that brought hip-hop to the masses.

In addition to the irrepressible “Good Times,” Chic have made their influence felt through the production and songwriting work that group masterminds Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards did for other artists of their era, including Sister Sledge (“We Are Family”) and Sheila B. and Devotion (“Spacer”), as well as established artists looking to get on the disco bandwagon like Diana Ross (“Upside Down”) and David Bowie (“Let’s Dance”) and some of the biggest artists from next generation of pop, like Madonna (“Like a Virgin”) and Duran Duran (“A View to a Kill”). Oh, and French dance artist Modjo sampled their “Soup For One” for their 2001 hit “Lady (Hear Me Tonight),” which is pretty cool.

Booklet for Riccardo Muti Conducts Mason Bates and Anna Clyne