For those of you who think Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra is at its best playing contemporary music, this weekend is the time to hit Bass Hall. They’re playing two works by Mason Bates, the composer who turns 39 in a few weeks and who has spent his career incorporating his work as a techno DJ into the classical tradition. FWSO will be playing Mothership, a bouncy, splashy, accessible piece with improvised cadenzas for various instruments that Bates wrote in 2011 for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra.
The other music of his you’ll hear is his Cello Concerto, which contains a duet for the solo cellist and the orchestra’s principal cellist, as well as the featured instrument being played with a guitar pick at one point. The soloist for this weekend is none other than Joshua Roman, for whom the work was written in the first place and who performed it during its world premiere in Seattle in 2014. Now he’s playing its regional premiere with our own outfit. Miguel Harth-Bedoya will also conduct Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony, but it’ll be the shiny new stuff that draws us to the orchestra this weekend.
Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra plays Fri-Sun at Bass Performance Hall, 555 Commerce St, FW. Tickets are $20-82. Call 817-665-6000.
