Christian Mason: The Composers’ Fund
Christian Mason will be recording a CD of Zwischen den Sternen (Between the Stars), to be released on Winter & Winter. This 40-minute piece was composed for Ensemble Recherche (2017 – 2018) and premiered at Ultraschall Festival, Berlin, in January 2019.
Taking inspiration from a Rilke poem of the same name, it meditates on the distance between people (by analogy with stars) and places aesthetic emphasis is on the sonic interactions between familiar and unfamiliar sounds, and spatial dispositions.
It also explores the sound of three uniquely modified scordatura string instruments (re-tuned to correspond to partials 8 – 15 of the harmonic spectrum), a matching re-tuned piano and a special role for steel drum with its glinting starry sound.
Composer Biography: A 2015 winner of an Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung Composer Prize, Christian Mason is enjoying a prolific career with an array of prestigious commissions.
Recent premieres include works for soprano Anu Komsi and the Philharmonia, Ensemble Recherche, hr-sinfonieorchester, and Vienna Philharmonic/Christian Thielemann. Christian is now writing pieces for Konzerthausorchester Berlin/Christoph Eschenbach, Arditti String Quartet, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, and is developing a music-theatre project – ‘(Dis)embodiment’ – initiated by the Royal Opera House.
Christian is a visiting teacher of composition at the University of Cambridge and is Composition Support Tutor for the LSO Panufnik Young Composers Project. During 2019 he held residencies at the Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia, Bamberg, and the SWR Experimentalstudio, Freiburg. He is published by Breitkopf & Härtel.