Gramophone‘s December 2019 Sounds of America section featured a new review of Cappella SF and Ragnar Bohlin’s Mass Transmission: Choral Works by Mason Bates recording:

“Bates’s versatility is further revealed on this disc of superb choral works featuring the inspired Cappella SF. In Sirens, six movements of beguiling and varied settings for a cappella chorus, Bates embraces an assortment of languages and musical styles to depict the seductive creatures of mythology and, with a passage from the New Testament, Jesus’s holy powers of persuasion. … Bates is noted for his novel employment of electronics, which are put to striking use in Mass Transmission, scored also for chorus, soloists and organ. … Amid occasional radio static, the piece weaves a poignant narrative in which choral lines – based on historical texts – are mixed with sampled sounds and vibrant organ sonorities. Both works could hardly have more incisive and seamless champions than Cappella SF, which Ragnar Bohlin, chorus director of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, founded in 2013. (He is paid tribute here at the end in Bates’s riotous Rag of Ragnar.) Lucky is the composer whose music is brought to life by these exceptional singers.”

—Donald Rosenberg, Gramophone

See the full review in Gramophone Magazine

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