After a full year of composing, editing, proofing, and — yes, mixing at Skywalker Studios (more on that in a bit) — I finally reach the premiere of Alternative Energy this month.  Maestro Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony give the work’s first performances at Symphony Center in Chicago (Feb 2-4 & 7) before taking it to California (Feb 14 in SF, Feb 17 in Orange County, Feb 18 in San Diego).

I decided to go big.

Alternative Energy is an ‘energy symphony’ spanning four movements and hundreds of years.  Beginning in a rustic Midwestern junkyard in the late 19^th Century, the piece travels through ever greater and 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 way of life.

These worlds are conjured by a variety of symphonic effects.  A blues fiddle accompanied by car parts dominates the ‘old-time’ first movement (the principle percussion, Cynthia Yeh, plays a ‘car part drumset’ assembled from scraps collected at a junkyard).  Actual recordings of Chicago’s FermiLab particle accelerator appear in highly dramatic form in the present-day movement (think: massive machines waking up all around you).  Surreal and trippy microtonal sonorities take us to the edge of a future industrial wasteland in China’s Xinjiang Provience.  And gently out-of-town, gamelan-sounding figuration, complimented by surround-sound jungle recordings and future birdsong, brings us to the far-off rainforest where the piece ends.

Like the tone poems of Berlioz or Liszt — though very different in sound — this piece uses an idée fixe, or melody, to link everything together.  This tune is heard on the fiddle, which conjures a figure like Henry Ford working in his junkyard, and is accompanied by a ‘phantom orchestra’ that trails the fiddler like ghosts.  The accelerando cranking of a car motor becomes a special motif in the piece, a kind of rhythmic embodiment of ever-more-powerful energy.  Indeed, this crank motif explodes in the electronics in the second movement, where we arrive at present-day Chicago.

In order to recreate the sound of a particle accelerator booting up, I travelled up to FermiLab (an enormous facility north of the city) and wandered around making recordings of the machinery involved in splitting atoms.  Huge power surges, epic hydraulic releases, alien-sounding high frequencies, you name it. Then I manipulated those sounds in my studio back in California, ultimately visiting Skywalker Studios to properly mix these sounds in a surround-sound environment.  Gary Rydstrom, a famed sound designer who works with folks like George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg, provided invaluable help in recreating the effect of the accelerator ‘waking up.’  Hip-hop beats, jazzy brass interjections, and joyous voltage blasts bring the movement to a clangorous finish.

Zoom a hundred years into a dark future of the Xinjiang Province.  On an eerie wasteland, a lone flute sings a tragically distorted version of the idée fixe, dreaming of a forgotten natural world.  But a powerful industrial energy simmers to the surface, and over the ensuing hardcore techno, wild orchestral splashes drive us to a catastrophic meltdown.  As the smoke clears, we find ourselves even further into the future: an Icelandic rainforest on a hotter planet.  Gentle, out-of-tune pizzicato accompany our fiddler, who returns over a woody percussion ensemble to make a quiet plea for simpler times.

Quite a lot of ground to cover — I’ll give you that.

But it can be done.  Symphonies can have both sonic inventiveness and narrative imagination — as long as the music drives the enterprise.  A mere glance at the movement titles should be enough to set the stage, and then it’s all about the orchestra.  Even the electronic component — the newest element of the piece — is at the service of the orchestra, of which it is just another section.

Whether this piece pulls it off is yet to be seen.  If you want to find out, please come!  Here’s the info.

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.

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.