Composer Christian Mason Wins 2025 Grawemeyer Music Composition

The University of Louisville has given the $100,000 honor to English composer Christian Mason

Established in 1984 by H. Charles Grawemeyer, the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition is given annually to honor "the power of creative ideas to improve our culture via music composition, education, religion, psychology, and world order."

Based in Kentucky, academics and community members of the University of Louisville have previously honored composers such as György Ligeti, Harrison Birtwistle, Pierre Boulez, Kaija Saariaho, Unsuk Chin, and Julian Anderson.

This year's award went to composer Christian Mason in recognition of his immersive work Invisible Threads. In April, Christian will accept his award and prize money of $100,000 at a ceremony in Louisville.

Written in 2022-2023 and premiered at the Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik, Invisible Threads is a performance installation for voices, bass clarinet, accordion, and string quartet. During performances of the piece, audience members are encouraged to roam the performance space, moving between 12 musicians.

The work uses texts written by British music critic, novelist, and librettist Paul Griffiths, who has now written texts to three Grawemeyer-Award-winning works.

The 2015 winner of an Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung Composer Prize, Mason is a visiting teacher of composition at the University of Cambridge, and mentor for the LSO Panufnik Young Composers Project, the Philharmonia Composers’ Academy and the Hong Kong Composers’ Scheme.

He has been a resident artist at Eton College, Villa Concordia, Civitella Ranieri and the SWR Experimental Studio in Freiburg. In 2012, he was awarded the Mendelssohn Scholarship and received a British Composer Award.

A graduate of King’s College London and the University of York, he is a founding Artistic Director of the Octandre Ensemble and his works are published by Breitkopf & Härtel. His works are recorded on the London Sinfonietta Label, LSO Live, Col Legno, Winter & Winter, and nonclassical.

(PC: Manu Theobald)