Conductor Michael Tilson Thomas first approached Bates about the commission during a concert intermission between performances of Tchaikovsky and Brahms. Bates wrote:
Fresh off the podium after the concerto, and apparently undistracted by the looming symphony in the second half, he suggested a collection of five pieces focusing on texture and sonority — perhaps like Schoenberg's Five Pieces for Orchestra. Since my music had largely gone in the other direction — large works that bathed the listener in immersive experiences — the idea intrigued me. I had often imagined a suite of concise, off-kilter symphonic pieces that would incorporate the grooves and theatrics of electronica in a highly focused manner. So, like the forgotten bands from the flipside of an old piece of vinyl, The B-Sides offers brief landings on a variety of peculiar planets, unified by a focus on fluorescent orchestral sonorities and the morphing rhythms of electronica.[1]
Structure
The work has a duration of roughly 22 minutes and is composed in five movements:[1]
The B-Sides has received mostly positive responses from critics. Joshua Kosman of the San Francisco Chronicle lauded the piece, writing:
...one of the great virtues of The B-Sides is that the electronics are rarely the point of the exercise, any more than the inclusion of massed brass or a wind machine is the point of a Richard Strausstone poem. Rather, the electronic beats - cannily shaped and finessed during performance by the composer, hunched over his laptop in the back of the percussion section - become one of many resources in his orchestral palette.[3]
Despite expressing misgivings for Bates's "rather self-consciously hip" style, Lawrence A. Johnson of the Chicago Classical Review called the symphony "much more substantial" and remarked, "Scored for large orchestra, The B-Sides shows that, despite his reputation as a composer whose music is dominated by rhythmic pop influences, Bates is at his finest and most convincing as a symphonic colorist working with a wide palette."[4] Richard Scheinin of the San Jose Mercury News wrote:
An artful orchestrator and schemer — he knows how to move, stealthily, from A to Z and back — his works drip with delicate atmospherics while prowling through beats and weaving warm harmonies and some convincing melodies into the spaced-out tapestry. All of that is true of The B-Sides, as is this: It's often hard to tell where Bates' purely acoustic sounds end and where his electronica begins; he is that skillful an integrator of his materials.[5]
