Christian Mason wins 2025 Grawemeyer Music Composition Award

The University of Louisville has today revealed English composer Christian Mason has been announced as the 2025 winner of its Grawemeyer Music Composition Award. Mason receives the award in recognition of his immersive work Invisible Threads and will accept his award and prize money of $100,000 at a ceremony in Louisville in April. 

Established by H. Charles Grawemeyer in 1984, the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition is given annually to ‘honour the power of creative ideas to improve our culture via music composition, education, religion, psychology, and world order.’ Recipients are chosen by the University of Louisville’s academics and community members. Mason joins a legacy of previous winners including György Ligeti, Harrison Birtwistle, Pierre Boulez, Kaija Saariaho, Unsuk Chin and Julian Anderson.

Award director Matthew Ertz, music librarian and associate professor at the University of Louisville’s Anderson Music Library said: ‘In its duration, instrumentation, and musical aesthetic, Invisible Threads challenges its listeners even as it speaks to a broad audience in a musically passionate and artistic way. This “performance installation” invites attendees to choose the way they encounter this work, enabling each to have a different experience, even as all enjoy this breathtaking music anew.’ 

Invisible Threads (2022–2023) is a performance installation for mobile voices, bass clarinet, accordion and string quartet during which audiences are encouraged to roam the performance space, moving between a spatially shifting ensemble of 12 musicians. The work premiered at the Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik and uses texts written by British music critic, novelist and librettist Paul Griffiths, who has now written texts to three Grawemeyer-Award-winning works.

Mason adds this latest award to a list of previous accolades including the 2015 Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung Composer Prize as well as residencies at the SWR Experimetalstudio Freiburg and the Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia Bamberg. He also mentors as part of the LSO’s Panufnik Young Composers Project, the Philharmonia Composers’ Academy and the Hong Kong Composers’ Scheme.

Mason said: ‘I’m profoundly grateful to join the company of Grawemeyer awardees. This recognition of Invisible Threads encourages me to dig even more deeply into long-held dreams and visions.’