The music of Mason Bates fuses innovative orchestral writing, the rhythms of electronica and techno, and imaginative narrative forms brought to life by cutting-edge sound design. A composer of symphonic music who often includes live electronica in his orchestral music, he has become known as an artist who moves fluidly between those two worlds—performing on electronic drumpad and laptop, for example, under Michael Tilson Thomas in "The B-Sides" at Carnegie Hall. Recent commissions have explored everything from the marriage of orchestral sonorities and earthquake recordings (Music From Underground Spaces for the California Symphony, where he served as composer-in- residence) to siren poetry from various cultures (Sirens for Chanticleer). A variety of purely acoustic works fill his diverse catalogue, including many works for the voice. He is currently composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony and makes his home in North Oakland.

Composition, Musicianship and Theory, Music History and Literature
 

David Conte (b. 1955) is the composer of over one hundred works published by E. C. Schirmer Music Company, including six operas, a musical, works for chorus, solo voice, orchestra, chamber music, organ, piano, guitar, and harp.  He has received commissions from Chanticleer, the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, the Dayton, Oakland and Stockton Symphonies, Atlantic Classical Orchestra, the American Guild of Organists, Sonoma City Opera and the Gerbode Foundation.  In 2007 he received the Raymond Brock commission from the American Choral Directors Association.   Conte co-wrote the film score for the acclaimed documentary Ballets Russes, shown at the Sundance and Toronto Film Festivals in 2005, and composed the music for the PBS documentary, Orozco: Man of Fire, shown on the American Masters Series in the fall of 2007.  Conte received his B. M. from Bowling Green State University, and his M. F. A. and. D. M. A. from Cornell University, where he studied with Karel Husa and Steven Stucky.   He was a Fulbright Scholar in Paris where he was one of the last students of Nadia Boulanger.   He is Professor of Composition and Chair of the Composition Department at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.  In 2010 he was appointed to the composition faculty of the European American Musical Alliance in Paris, and in 2011 he joined the board of the American Composers Forum. In 2014 he was named Composer in Residence with Cappella SF, a professional chorus in San Francisco.

Audio samples can be heard at davidconte.net.
David Conte can be contacted at dconte@sfcm.edu.