Jan 2012Lots of music (& an orangutan)

It’s the last day of 2011.  My wife and son are napping peacefully.  I am shuffling about downstairs, wistfully remembering former New Years Eve parties that, through the prism of parenthood, seem as distant as hobbits and dragons.

Yes, life has changed over the past year.

Amidst a happy storm of composing new works, performing old ones, curating, and DJing, I have added ‘7am toddler body-slamming’ to my activities.  (Toliver greatly enjoys challenging me to wrestle, often just before I’ve had my first sip of caffeine.)  Having a baby graduate into toddlerhoold is certainly my biggest change of 2011, probably on the level of having an orangutan thrown through your living room window, but several significant musical events came to pass as well.

Alternative Energy was written.  This ‘energy symphony’ spans four movements and hundreds of years, beginning in an 1896 Midwestern junkyard and traveling through greater and ever more powerful forces of energy — a present-day particle collider, a futuristic Chinese nuclear plant — until it reaches a future Icelandic rainforest, where humanity’s last inhabitants seek a return to a simpler life.  While the Chicago Symphony has played several of my works on seasons past, Alternative Energy is the first written expressly for this orchestra and Maestro Riccardo Muti as part of my composer-in-residency.  Its composition occupied me for much of 2011, and I found my approach to integrating electronics into the orchestra evolving and, perhaps, maturing.  The sounds coming from the speakers are as carefully crafted as the sonorities in the orchestra, and the influences reach far beyond techno.  If you find yourself in Chicago or California in February, please come take a listen to my biggest piece to date.

Also in 2011: Mass Transmission was written.  This third piece for Michael Tilson Thomas uses not an orchestra but a chorus, supported by organ (the hands and feet of the amazing Paul Jacobs) and electronics.  An intriguing bit of early radio history brought about this work, which tells the story of far-separated parents and children speaking over the first wireless radio transmissions.  Actual transcripts and recollections of the 1920’s communications between Holland and Java are set to music in an eerie and intimate twenty-minute work.  Having this piece commissioned as part of the SF Symphony Mavericks Festival was a great honor, and it is especially exciting bringing the piece on tour with the SFS to New York and Michigan after the March premiere in California.

There was the premiere of Mothership by the YouTube Symphony at the Sydney Opera House.  While Mothership is not as grand in scope as other symphonic works of mine, it satisfied a long-elusive goal: writing a gripping opener.  Works like The B-Sides and Liquid Interface grapple with large concepts over long time spans, but I was overdue to write that 9-minute barn-burner.  In the process, I learned (again) that the simplest thing is the hardest thing.  Much credit goes to Maestro Michael Tilson Thomas, who leaned on me to create something both challenging and immediately engaging.

I also learned that high production values are not antithetical to the artform.  The YouTube Symphony was probably the most elaborately produced classical event ever, and certainly the one seen by the most eyes.  The field of classical music, replete with century-old instruments and innovations based around natural acoustics, has an understandable mistrust of this kind of Hollywood-style showbiz. But the digital age offers powerful tools to us as creators and communicators.  Using YouTube to corral a stunning group of musicians from around the globe, bringing that orchestra to life with imaginative lighting and projections, then webcasting it live to millions of people — that was just plain cool as hell.

So yes, production became a major part of my life in 2011.  Not just with YouTube, but also with Mercury Soul (my classical/club project) and with MusicNOW (the Chicago Symphony’s new-music series).

Mercury Soul expanded beyond San Francisco clubs in 2011, with shows at Miami’s New World Symphony (in the magnificent Frank Gehry concert hall) and at a massive warehouse with musicians of the Chicago Symphony.  The project reimagines the concert experience through the lens of large-scale club events, dropping in short sets of classical music into an evening of DJing and surreal stagecraft.  Much like a wedding, the event seems fun and spontaneous to those freely roaming around, dancing, and having drinks; to those running it, it’s a NASA space shuttle launch, with musicians appearing around the space at precise moments, techno morphing into Bela Bartòk, and specially composed electro-acoustic interludes guiding the audience from one musical world to the next.  Production can a wonderful tool as long as it serves a musically substantive and compelling idea, and that’s something that Maestro Benjamin Shwartz and director Anne Patterson and I will continue to emphasize when planning Mercury Soul’s 2012 shows (Jan 20 & March 23).

And the CSO’s MusicNOW series really blossomed into the immersive, theatrical new-music experience that Anna Clyne and I have been dreaming about.  When challenged with a beautiful but cavernous 1,500 person space to present contemporary music, we looked up — at the lighting rig and projection screens.  If you were to visit a MusicNOW concert in March or May 2012, you’d find cinematic program notes, stunning Chicago Symphony musicians performing exciting new works from all manner of styles, and thousand-person crowds tumbling into the lobby to catch DJ Striz of ‘ill measures’ for the post-party.  We are fortunate to have the full support of Muti and the Chicago Symphony in creating an warm, inviting, and yes trippy vibe at the Harris Theater.

It’s still 2011.  The orangutan and his mother are still napping.  But not for long on both fronts: soon, a Violin Concerto will emerge from a little cage, soon a song cycle for Phoenix will get to my desk — and yes, soon I will launch across the room with a 2-year-old clinging to my neck, a minefield of perfectly folded laundry dotting the king-sized landscape we are about to destroy (“Come on, guys, not in the clothes!”).  But before all that, let’s just take a moment to reflect on the passing of another year of life, love, and art, with all their ups and downs.

To all those great adventurers from 2011 who, in their own quiet ways, often made the best moments possible.

Dec 2011The B-Sides & the (new) Detroit Symphony

Attention, American orchestras: look to Detroit for a way forward.

Wait a minute — the Detroit Symphony?  The storied orchestra that collapsed in an acrimonious labor dispute last year, forcing the cancellation of its season?  Yes.  Because it’s possible to rise from the ashes with a much stronger foundation.

Plus, they play like rock stars.

A bit of history: the strike that brought this great orchestra to its knees was a result of the same problems that have plagued the city for decades: a faltering car industry and a shrinking population.  With less philanthropic support and dwindling attendance, and the recession adding a few extra kicks, the orchestra’s balance sheet doubled over.  In the face of significantly lower salaries and benefits, the musicians decided to trade Orchestra Hall for the picket line.  Compelling arguments could be found on both sides of that picket line; but meanwhile, to the sadness of just about everyone in American music, an amazing orchestra was playing rests.  For six months.

Fast forward to last weekend.  To a packed hall three nights in a row, the great Leonard Slatkin conducted a program of Schubert, Rachmaninhoff, and Bates (that’s me), with a live webcast and, to boot, a live recording.  Let’s boil that down: big crowds on Thanksgiving weekend, a digital leap unmatched by any orchestra, and a new recording in the pipeline.  How did this happen?

Answer: creative thinking by all involved — and a willingness to change.

Admit it: change is not easy.  Even nomadic hippies who pass through Berkeley and sleep somewhere different every night have their little rituals, such as smoking pot upon first awaking.  But sometimes we are given the disguised opportunity to change or die — and that’s when we have the rare chance to change the game.

Detroit’s new contract has several of these game-changers, but let’s focus on the big one: media.  Not everyone outside of classical music understands why the recording and dissemination of orchestral performances is so highly regulated, so let me summarize it for you: No.  Just about any question one might ask relating to a recording can be answered with that not-so-magic word: you can’t copy it onto your computer, you can’t mail it to another conductor, and God help you if you play it on the radio.  Webcast?  Very funny.

Being forced into a change-or-die scenario, Detroit was able to rethink this policy.   Suddenly they are webcasting every other concert.  People from around the globe can hear a slew of superb concerts for free.  “DSO Live” educates the public, increases awareness of classical music, and encourages Detroiters to scurry to Orchestra Hall.  (No one is going to pass up the glorious acoustics of a live orchestra because they saw it online — that’s where the symphony keeps an edge in the Digital Age).  And releasing live concert recordings on CD and iTunes has become far more reasonable under the new agreement.

So there I am, about to perform the electronics on Saturday night, and backstage there’s the bustle of an evening newscast.  Cameras!  Teleprompters!  Offstage interviews!  Makeup!  (No, I’m not J Edgar Hoover.  I just have a lot of greasy face-shine that needs help.) Knowing that, say, Japanese insomniacs might be watching is a real adrenaline ante-up.  My friends in Chicago and SF can tune-in; my toddler can see what daddy is doing with “the animal orchestra.” (He still calls it that, thanks to a certain children’s book — and anyway, I’m actually starting to believe that the Yak beats the drum).

But the showbiz aside — how was the concert?

Incredible.  The band plays with such cohesion and power.  The fact that the musicians embraced the piece meant a ton to me — and certainly made for great performances.  On top of it, there’s an American treasure named Leonard Slatkin piloting this ship.  He’s been educating me since high school, when his recordings with St. Louis brought the American symphonic tradition into my life.  Leonard took a chance commissioning my first big orchestral piece, Liquid Interface, and that resulted in wonderful performances together from the Kennedy Center to Carnegie Hall.  He understands my music in a very deep way, and he doesn’t flinch in the face of the industrial techno beats of the finale of The B-Sides, “Warehouse Medicine.”

That finale, after all, is an homage to the Detroit warehouse parties where techno was born.  Performing The B-Sides in Detroit felt like a special homecoming — to a place I’d only visited aurally, in countless techno albums.  Seeing and hearing this historic orchestra back in the game really gives me hope about the future of symphonic music in this country.  It’s time you made your pilgrimage too.

Nov 2011Video Killed the Program Book

Your mission: program the best new music from wherever, to be played by Chicago Symphony musicians, in the Harris Theater — a 1500-person capacity theater with lots of high-tech stagecraft.  The concert series: MusicNOW.  Opening date of the 2011-12 season: October 17.

First thought: that’s a lot of ears to bring to anywhere, let alone a contemporary concert music.

Second thought: Chicago Symphony players.  Nice…

Third thought: stagecraft?  Hm….

One thinks of the Chicago Symphony and names like Solti and Abado and, these days, Muti come to mind.  Not exactly an ‘open mic’ situation.  The guilded Symphony Center resembles an Italian opera house in both acoustic and décor, and the CSO has rivaled any of the great orchestras.

But the CSO has lived a sleek existence outside the walls of Symphony Center for almost two decades.  It’s called MusicNOW.

When I first talked with Anna Clyne, my co-conspirator in the resident composer post, we both agreed to take the series in the direction of immersive concert experiences with omnivorous stylistic appetites.  A violin concerto by Finnish master Kaija Saariaho, a new commission by electronica duo Mouse on Mars, a visit by African instrument builder Victor Gama.  Rigorous pieces of the French IRCAM school to mystical, almost ambient works by Marcos Balter.  All brought to life with fluid and inviting stagecraft.

That’s where the program book comes in — or, more accurately, bows out.

Many classical listeners cherish their program books.  The content, however, need not be limited by the medium.  Think about lighting.  A printed program book requires relatively bright house lights, and there’s an opportunity cost when one bypasses the magic of music in near-darkness.  Imagine isolated pools of light presenting various ensembles for the evening, linked by cinematic program notes.

Enter Phillip Huscher.

His office looks as you’d imagine the CSO program annotator’s office would: papers, books, scores, CD liner notes everywhere.  When presented with the idea of ‘digital program notes,’ he was surprisingly game.  Paired-down program notes, projected in between pieces — with short video interviews with composers — that seemed an interesting challenge to Phillip.  Soon Anna and Phillip and I are sending scripts back and forth to Hillary Leben, the visual designer behind the CSO Beyond the Score multi-media shows.  More meetings than you’d ever imagine.

In the end, what’s most important is the music.  And we had great performances of excellent works by Corigliano to Dennehy, in a season that will feature works by Aaron Kernis, Evan Zipporan, Lee Hyla, and many more.  But often overlooked is the concert experience, and it’s especially important in a genre as challenging as contemporary music.  Communication and information, brought to life with the tools of our Information Age: forget the professor.  Let’s call the lighting guy, Todd, and ask him about gobo-lights on the solo fiddle player who opens the show.

Come visit us next month, when Hubbard Street Dance presents new choreography to Julia Wolfe, or the rest of the season (info).

And bring a flashlight.

Oct 2011What makes a great conductor?

What makes a great conductor? Being a composer at the mercy of them, I’m constantly confronting this question. Some recent performances prompt a few thoughts.

Take Marin Alsop, who recently conducted Desert Transport at the Cabrillo Festival. This is a woman who conducts a dozen new pieces a week during a time when most of humanity is on vacation. How does she do it? For starters, she knows the score inside-out at the first rehearsal, and she’s bred an orchestra of exceptionally serious musicians. So when she gives the first downbeat, already a great deal of the work has already been done: due diligence to the music, and long-term development of the orchestra.

And it’s a very nice downbeat: so much experience lies behind that one swing of the arms! Laying down a clear beat, giving the right players the right looks at the right times, keeping all the instruments in balance with subtle nods — these should be in the toolbox of every maestro, but seemingly simple tasks are not easily mastered (cf: drawing a perfect circle).

With Desert Transport, Marin conducted a piece that literally cranks up (it’s about a helicopter flight over Sedona — excerpt here). Tons of energy pulses from the first measure, and the tempo constantly increases as the aircraft takes flight. Making an evenly-paced two-minute accelerando ain’t easy, yet she had the orchestra locked tightly to her the entire time. There’s even a passage where the conductor syncs-up with a field recording of Pima Indians — sort of like juggling on a rocking boat (the Pima don’t exactly keep a steady beat). She did all this exquisitely, charismatically, and generously. Marin may be part woman/part laser in rehearsals, but her warmth comes through at showtime. That combo, for me, is what makes her a great conductor.

Then there’s Riccardo Muti. He’s from an entirely different time and place.

His reputation as an ‘authoritarian’ precedes him (thanks to some critics). He certainly looks the part: dark looks, a fierce brow. And sure, one thinks of his tenure at La Scala and the knees begin shaking. Yet the man is beloved by those who play under him.

How he achieves this lies at the nexus of über-serious musicianship and Old World charm. Here’s an example: you’re sitting in Chicago’s Symphony Center watching a rehearsal of Aus Italien by Strauss. Almost all of the information comes from the maestro’s baton: tempo (obviously), dynamics (a few inches’ difference is a huge swell from the brass), even character (little bounces with the scepter and those staccati sound way more clear). This is textbook efficiency.

But suddenly he stops and starts telling a long anecdote. Instruments go on laps, percussionists take seats, time passes. One wonders: is this storytime? At just that mind-wandering moment, the maestro comes to his point: the third movement of Aus Italien isn’t just a beautiful seaside idyll. It’s the Italian coast seen through the eyes of a German, and a subtle balance of rigor and rest needs to permeate every phrase. The musicians take up their instruments, and they sound transformed. The entire vibe has morphed. The maestro’s little story was charming — and massively effective.

Another living legend, Michael Tilson Thomas, adds a very special angle: he composes. Writing music for Michael is perhaps like sending a screenplay to Quentin Tarantino. He can look at a work from both the inside and outside. I’ve gotten used to chatting with him about the music before it’s written: with both The B-Sides and Mothership, for example, I passed along written overviews of the works before a note was composed. His very pithy, meaningful suggestions always impact the pieces. (I left a few pages about his latest piece, Mass Transmission, in his dressing room after last night’s concert — we’ll see!)

But beyond Michael’s musical genius is his Berstein-esque ability to communicate with anyone in the room. His thoughtful commentary to the audience enhances the experience for everyone — from seasoned music professionals to first-timers. I still think about his introduction to the Berg Violin Concerto: in a few short minutes, he elucidated the entire inner workings of a complex 12-tone piece. That ability to reach out, in addition to create conducting chops, is so critical today.

But of course, great conductors exist outside of the pantheon of living legends. Robert Moody, who leads orchestras from Portland to Phoenix to Winston-Salem, has conducted more of my music than anyone. (He commissioned my first piece.) His combination of superb musicianship, affable communicative skills, and fearless programming sets him apart from a great many other young conductors. Or take Edwin Outwater, who recently conducted a concert of my music in Portugal: his eclectic programs move from classical to modern to indie rock. Accessible yet substantive, provocative yet engaging: killer combo.

So, what makes a great conductor? There’s not one answer: it’s different with each one. But certainly, every great conductor needs more than superb musicianship. Charisma and leadership are critical, as well as sincerity and generosity. Musicians, after all, don’t like to play for a crossing-guard; they want to play with a partner, someone who invites them into a unique experience. Wish I had space to discuss all of the wonderful ones I’ve been luck to encounter.

(For example: Leonard Slatkin, who leads the Detroit Symphony in The B-Sides in November – check back to see how it goes!)

Sep 20112011-12: What Lies Ahead

My idyllic summer of composing, cocoon–like, in Northern California is now beginning to morph, taking flight in a gratifyingly busy season of concerts around the country. Here’s a quick flyover:

Two large works will be premiered, one commissioned by Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony (where I enter my second year as composer-in-residence), and the other commissioned by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony (where I am serving as Project San Francisco Artist in Residence). Both commissions deepen relationships with two orchestras that have figured prominently in my life over the past several years — and I am still waist-deep in writing both!

For the CSO, writing Alternative Energy comes on the heels of a wonderful set of performances in May, when Maestro Muti conducted my symphonic suite The B-Sides at Symphony Hall. I’d already had the wonderful experience of hearing the CSO perform my Music From Underground Spaces the year before, and of working with some of the superb musicians in chamber settings, so at this point I am writing for family members.

Alternative Energy will be biggest work to date, an ‘energy symphony’ structured in four movements that are each separated by a hundred years. It starts with the invention of the automobile in a Midwestern junkyard, moves through present-day Chicago (using recorded samples from FermiLab, the massive particle collider), and thereafter continues into the near- and distant-future. Having experienced Muti’s keen sense of drama up close, not only in my music but in Berlioz and Verdi, I am using the electronic component in the most theatrical manner thus far. (Think: particle collider recreation spinning around the audience.)

San Francisco’s new piece came about because of my work with MTT, who has conducted several new works lately, and because of the amazing SFS Chorus Director Ragnar Bohlin. After hearing my Sirens premiered by the superstar chorus Chanticleer, Ragnar suggested a big new choral work. Michael wanted to premiere it on the return of the famed Mavericks Festival, which set everyone’s hair on fire ten years ago, and all I needed was an idea.

Enter Mass Transmission.

The increasing confluence of technology and human activity is taken for granted today, with round-the-clock Twitter feeds and Skype chats between Australia and California (cf: Mothership premiered in Sydney; small child in Oakland). But what about the first time technology bridged oceans? That is the subject of Mass Transmission, which sets early radio transcripts to music in a work for chorus, organ, and electronics.

In the early 1920’s, a massive transmission facility in northern Europe had a direct line of contact with a tiny island in Java. Over crackling transmission signals sent between the height of civilization and the indigenous world of the Dutch West Indies, soldiers stationed abroad were able to hear their children’s voices for the first time. This ethereal work, which will showcase the SFS Chorus and Paul Jacobs on organ, will reveal shimmering choral sonorities through a quivering static field.

In addition to these new works, the old ones live on in performances by longtime supporters. Leonard Slatkin conducts the Detroit Symphony in The B-Sides, Robert Moody conducts the Portland Symphony in Rusty Air in Carolina (also on the docket in Charlotte and elsewhere), and works such as Mothership and Sea-Blue Circuitry move through various orchestras around the country.

On the curating front, where I have been spending increasing time in recent years, a great deal of my energy will be directed to Chicago, where I have been working with composer Anna Clyne to find the world’s most compelling composers and bring them to the CSO’s MusicNOW series. Using all the lighting and stagecraft of Chicago’s Harris Theater, we have been hard at work drawing thousand-strong crowds to hear multi-medium chamber concerts. Transforming the concert experience has also been the goal of Mercury Soul, a collaboration with Maestro Benjamin Shwartz and director Anne Patterson. The event is a DJed party superimposed onto a concert of new music, with the audience roaming freely throughout the large space. Begun in the large clubs of San Francisco, the project is now being invited by institutions such as the New World Symphony to transform spaces. We offer two big shows in the new Frank Gehry-designed concert hall in Miami this season.

That’s it in a nutshell. Check back soon to see the new website!

Aug 2011Portugal in July

What do you get when you combine a fabulous orchestra, a fearless conductor, an architectural wonder, and a city flowing with Port wine? One of the coolest shows I’ve ever encountered.

Maestro Edwin Outwater, whose life has intersected with mine in both San Francisco and Chicago, recently made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: curate an evening of symphonic music at the Casa da Musica in Portugal, then spin a late-night DJ set in the sprawling outdoor plaza. And there would be quite a bit of Port tasting involved, it being the city of Porto and all.
Short answer: yes. Long answer: hell yes.

But what to program? Summertime concerts tend towards lightness and accessibility, yet I thought we could offer something more substantive and still be engaging. We both wanted to open with Mothership, which Edwin experienced first-hand at its premiere by Michael Tilson Thomas and the YouTube Symphony at the Sydney Opera House. It invites an orchestra’s best soloists to ‘dock’ with a techno-driven orchestra, and the electronic element certainly offers something new and unusual in the symphonic space.

So that took care of the opening, but we had to work out the heart of the program. And that’s when we threw the curveballs.
Ever since I composed The B-Sides, a suite of brief landings on five surreal planets, I dreamed of pairing it with one of the classics of modernism: Arnold Schoenberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra. While the two sound very different, they share a formal similarity (five short pieces) and a laser-like focus on fluorescent orchestral sonorities. Quite a departure for a summertime show to present a modernist classic alongside two contemporary works — but we were confident the program would both challenge and delight.

Luckily, the orchestra was up for the challenge. When I arrived in Porto a few weeks ago, I encountered a very strong band from top to bottom. The players weren’t phased by the electro-acoustic elements of my music or the hyper-complexity of Schoenberg’s. And their concert hall is mind-blowing: a giant cube balanced on its corner, with a beautiful main hall and lots of surprising, odd-shaped spaces sprinkled throughout. There’s an entire room covered in cork and foam padding; one decorated with 18th-century Portugese tiles; and even a tiny one with a half-size door à la Being John Malcovich.

In between rehearsals in that beautifully intriguing space, Edwin and I explored Porto. Some of the beast seafood I’ve encountered was served to us that week, including a massive seabass accompanied by Porto’s signatue ‘green’ wine (a light, almost evervescent white that has a greenish hue). We wandered the ancient cobbled streets of the Ribiera district, surfed in the chilly Atlantic, and sampled delicious old ports with the orchestra’s charming executive director, Andrew Bennett.

When showtime arrived, I had the pleasure of watching one of the great young American conductors bring my music to life. Edwin leads Canada’s Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony — another place where he offers imaginative programming — and he conducts with the confidence and restraint of a true maestro. I especially enjoyed his interpretations of the acoustic movements of The B-Sides, especially “Aerosol Melody Hanalei” (about the beachside psyche). After an afternoon of surfing with this native Californian, I loved watching him recreate the northshore of Kauai right there onstage.

Porto being a Latin city, it is filled with people up for a late-night DJ set. I spun everything from ambient downtempo to minimal techno, moving gradually up the tempo dial in front of an outdoor plaza filled with grooving bodies. At one point I looked up and saw the full moon rising above the edge of the giant cube of the Casa. A cool wind blew through the square as I dropped the needle on my last record.

By the time I joined Edwin and Andrew for dinner (and, yes, some beautiful 20-year tawny), midnight had arrived. We strolled out onto the rooftop patio to admire the evening. Porto stretch out beneath us, bathed in the bright moonlight, with the Atlantic hiding under a light fog. What a city, what an orchestra. And what a damn fine glass of port to cap it all off.

Jul 2011Muti, the CSO, & The B-Sides

Three hours before my meeting with Riccardo Muti, world famous maestro and current leader of the Chicago Symphony, I looked out the airplane window. The vast flatness of Illinois. None too scenic — but certainly more interesting than the Italian grammar textbook I’d been wrestling with since San Francisco. The maestro and I were to discuss The B-Sides, my orchestral suite he would conduct that week, and southern Italians appreciate a good chat in their native tongue.

And he’s quite old-school. Lots of Lei’s and convoluted subjunctives.

So I rolled off the plane clutching both textbook and score, my head filled with music and phrases, and looked ahead to my week in Chicago: three subscription concerts, an off-site club show, season planning for the year ahead, lectures, luncheons, everything short of a trapeze act.

I believe in the military they call this hitting the ground shooting.

Luckily, I was making music not war, and the week was a joy. The CSO is the Ferarri of orchestras, equipped to handle any kind of music, and while Muti is known for his interpretations of 19th greats, he’s devoted huge amounts of his career to living composers.

So when the door of his dressing room opened — after the pleasantries and, yes, convoluted subjunctives — I watched him open The B-Sides and marveled at the sheer volume of scribbling on every page. For a gracious and kind man, he’s quite a musical animal: when he commits, he goes whole-hog.

And for a man of 70 who has the world eating from his hand, Muti displayed a remarkable humility in regards to the electronics. Locking to a beat track, he explained, is not something he had ever done. It was not the most natural of arrangements for an old-school maestro, he told me — but he liked a good challenge.

Beyond the electronic element, he was also intrigued by some of the textures. He asked about the sliding string harmonics in “Aerosol Melody Hanalei” (which images a melody evaporating at cadence points), or the jazzy grit of “Temescal Noir” (which reimagines foggy San Francisco noir films in in Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood). And he appreciated the drama of the central movement, “Gemini in the Solar Wind,” which sets a NASA recording of a spacewalk to music. A southern Italian loves drama (especially if he’d led La Scala for two decades).

The concerts were amazing. The dusky, eerie opening — “Broom of the System” — swept into the house, with its off-kilter grooves of sandpaper blocks and ‘future clocks’ (morphing electronica grooves). The ‘broom’ is perhaps the hardest movement of all, with a mischievous chimney-sweep rhythm that hiccups every measure. I’d had a wonderful ‘first try’ with the orchestra a year ago, when they performed Music From Underground Spaces under Carlos Kalmar. But The B-Sides is a longer, much more involved piece, and every single player gave it their best. And that’s an amazing thing with a band this good.

By the time we reached the frenetic final movement ¬— “Warehouse Medicine,” an homage to Midwestern warehouse parties — I was actually watching this iconic maestro groove to hardcore techno. Out-of-tune pizzicato, hair-on-fire woodwind figuration, and massive brass hits were accompanied by two subwoofers (which, during rehearsals, Muti accused of playing with his pacemaker).

After my piece was done, I scurried through a side-door into the house to hear the Schumann concerto played by Yo-Yo Ma. Shifting gears is not quite it: how about jumping from one moving vehicle to another. This group can do that without batting a hundred eyes.

What an orchestra, what a maestro. The CSO right now is on top of the world. Thanks to everyone for making it happen.