Uploaded December 2022 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
This is composer Mason Bates's super creative, exhilarating symphony for electronica and orchestra in four movements, "Alternative Energy". The work was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, for whom Bates was then composer-in-residence.
The piece takes you through various periods in time, as well as way ahead in the future. Beginning in a rustic Midwestern junkyard in the late 19th 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.
COMPOSER: Mason Bates
CONDUCTOR: Michael Tilson Thomas
ORCHESTRA: San Francisco Symphony
TRACKLIST:
0:00 - I. Ford's Farm, 1896 (an amateur fiddler invents a car)
7:08 - II. Chicago, 2012 (including the FermiLab particle accelerator)
13:02 - III. Xinjiang Province, 2112 (twilight on an industrial wasteland)
21:08 - IV. Reykjavik, 2222 (an Icelandic Rain Forest)
Please be aware that all of the music (and images) featured in this video belong to their respective owners, and I or this channel does not claim any right over them. I upload these solely for archiving purposes, and for the sharing and enjoyment of great music. Monetization is not enabled. If you are the rightful owner of copyrighted material used and would like the video removed from YouTube, please, instead of reporting/striking my channel, leave a comment below with your statement and I will take the video down effective immediately.
This is composer Mason Bates's super creative, exhilarating symphony for electronica and orchestra in four movements, "Alternative Energy". The work was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, for whom Bates was then composer-in-residence.
The piece takes you through various periods in time, as well as way ahead in the future. Beginning in a rustic Midwestern junkyard in the late 19th 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.
COMPOSER: Mason Bates
CONDUCTOR: Michael Tilson Thomas
ORCHESTRA: San Francisco Symphony
TRACKLIST:
0:00 - I. Ford's Farm, 1896 (an amateur fiddler invents a car)
7:08 - II. Chicago, 2012 (including the FermiLab particle accelerator)
13:02 - III. Xinjiang Province, 2112 (twilight on an industrial wasteland)
21:08 - IV. Reykjavik, 2222 (an Icelandic Rain Forest)
Please be aware that all of the music (and images) featured in this video belong to their respective owners, and I or this channel does not claim any right over them. I upload these solely for archiving purposes, and for the sharing and enjoyment of great music. Monetization is not enabled. If you are the rightful owner of copyrighted material used and would like the video removed from YouTube, please, instead of reporting/striking my channel, leave a comment below with your statement and I will take the video down effective immediately.
![Paul Cantrell — The Broken Mirror of Memory (2011) [w/ score]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/fEXLrRnaYbU/mqdefault.jpg "Paul Cantrell — The Broken Mirror of Memory (2011) [w/ score]
This is Paul Cantrell’s 4-movement work for bass clarinet and piano, “The Broken Mirror of Memory.” Cantrell writes:
“Entanglement, soliloquy, tango, flight: each movement poses a problem from which the next unfolds. Themes continually resurface, transformed, as the music reinvents its own past – the endless process Gabriel García Márquez described as ‘piecing together the broken mirror of memory from so many scattered shards.’ The coda gathers everything together, grappling, burning down – and then, from the embers, a simple benediction emerges, present all along, now laid bare. We discover in retrospect that the music’s destination has always been its source. ‘The Broken Mirror of Memory’ was chosen as the winner of the International Clarinet Association’s Composition Competition in 2012.”
COMPOSER: Paul Cantrell
BASS CLARINET: Pat OKeefe
PIANO: Paul Cantrell
TRACKLIST:
0:00 - Introduction
I. Entanglement
II. Soliloquy
III. Tango
IV. Flight
Please be aware that all of the music (and images) featured in this video belong to their respective owners, and I or this channel does not claim any right over them. I upload these solely for archiving purposes, and for the sharing and enjoyment of great music. Monetization is not enabled. If you are the rightful owner of copyrighted material used and would like the video removed from YouTube, please, instead of reporting/striking my channel, leave a comment below with your statement and I will take the video down effective immediately.")
