Mason Bates

Mason Wesley Bates (born January 23, 1977) is a Grammy award-winning American composer of symphonic music and DJ of electronic dance music. He is the first composer-in-residence of the Kennedy Center, and he has also been in residence with Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the California Symphony. In addition to his notable works Mothership, Anthology of Fantastic Zoology, and The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, he composed the score to Gus Van Sant’s film The Sea of Trees. In a 2018 survey of American orchestras, he was rated the second-most performed living composer. On September 21, 2025, his opera The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay opened the Metropolitan Opera’s 140th season. Life Bates was born in Philadelphia and raised in Richmond, Virginia, and Newtown, Virginia, where his family homestead and farm is located. He exhibited an early interest in creative writing at St. Christopher’s School and received a letter from the Mayor of Munich in response to his poem The Village of a Million People, written after a visit to the German city. His earliest choral compositions were conducted by his piano teacher Hope Armstrong Erb, a