Deep Rooted
Ten Years of Music-Making in Houston
Friday, May 23, 7:30pm
Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston
3400 Main Street, 77002
$30 general admission
About
Kinetic Ensemble closes out its milestone 10th season with a program tracing and celebrating its Houston roots. The evening features a world premiere by composer Mason Bynes — who hails from Sugar Land, and is now based in New York — that draws inspiration from the roller rinks of her hometown, and the Houston premiere of a new work by genre-defying artist Evan Ziporyn, written for Kinetic and premiered earlier in the spring. The program continues with two interwoven works by British composers Frank Bridge and Benjamin Britten, and are a nod to Kinetic’s first pilot performance in 2014. Celebrate 10 years of collaborative music-making and “thoughtful, incisive programming” (Arts and Culture Texas) with Kinetic!
— curated by Natalie Lin Douglas, violinist and Artistic Director
Program
Frank Bridge: Three Idylls for string quartet, H.67 (1906)
Benjamin Britten: Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, Op. 10 (1937)
Mason Bynes: New Work (2025, World Premiere)
Evan Ziporyn: New Work (2025, Texas Premiere)
Featured Composers
Mason Bynes is a New York based composer, vocalist, and multimedia artist from Sugar Land, TX. In a post-modern tradition, she pulls from various stylistic sources, blurring the line between traditionalism and modernism. Her goal in creating music and art is to bridge the gap between genre and sound in order to bring listeners together. She received her Master of Music in Composition from the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and she also holds a Bachelor of Music in composition from the University of North Texas.
Mason’s musical curiosity fuels her pursuit of collaboration in a myriad of artistic mediums, including film, spoken word, music for acoustic performance, and even the culinary arts. In her latest artistic season, she's enjoyed a variety of premieres and releases of her music, including: her first operetta with Boston Lyric Opera, in collaboration with Boston's Poet Laureate, Porsha Olayiwola, and Castle of Our Skins; the release of her brass quartet piece "For Rosa" on The Westerlies' latest album, MOVE; and the premiere of her music by Art of Elan for a new film by British-American visual artist, Daniel Dean. The Washington Master Chorale recently awarded Bynes the inaugural Florence Price Prize and premiered her new choral work, "Dust Bowl," last fall.
In addition to serving on the film/tv composition team at Raging Cloud Studios, Bynes currently serves as a career coach at New York University after years of coaching emerging artists at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Mason continues to sing and perform with a variety of ensembles, including The Boston Pops' Holiday Pops Singers. This season, she is looking forward to the premiere for her latest piece for wind ensemble with The Concord Band, and the reprise of her work "The Wanderer's Tethering" with Castle of Our Skins.
Composer/conductor/clarinetist Evan Ziporyn's music has taken him from Balinese temples to concert halls around the world.
He has composed for and collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma, Brooklyn Rider, Maya Beiser, Ethel, Anna Sofie Von Otter, the American Composers Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Iva Bittova, Terry Riley, Don Byron, Wu Man, and Bang on a Can. In 2017, his arrangements were featured on Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s The Vietnam War, and on Silkroad’s Grammy-winning album Sing Me Home.
Most recently, his orchestral reimagining of David Bowie's final album, Blackstar, was recently released on Islandia Music, featuring Ziporyn conducting his own Ambient Orchestra with Maya Beiser, cello soloist. Since its 2017 premiere, Ziporyn has conducted the work in Boston, Barcelona, New York Central Park Summerstage, Australia's Adelaide Fringe Festival, Strathmore Hall, and numerous other national and international venues. 2019 also saw the world premieres of two new works, the drum concerto Impulse Control for the Bowling Green New Music Festival, and the gamelan/string hybrid Air=Water for Philadelphia's Network for New Music. Other recent works include the collaborative immersive installation Arachnodrone/Spider's Canvas with Christine Southworth, which premiered at Paris' Palais de Tokyo in 2018, and The Demon in the Diagram with visual artist Matthew Ritchie and choreographer Hope Mohr.
Ziporyn has released numerous albums on Cantaloupe Music, New World, CRI, Airplane Ears, and other labels. Other honors include a USA Artist Fellowship, the Goddard Lieberson Prize from the American Academy, Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship, and commissions from Carnegie Hall, Kronos Quartet, Rockefeller Multi-Arts Program, and Meet the Composer. At MIT he is Distinguished Professor of Music, Director of the Center for Art, Science and Technology, and currently Guest Director of the MIT Symphony Orchestra.