About
Born in 1994, Grace-Evangeline Mason grew up in the West Midlands, learning trombone, clarinet and piano. She studied music at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and the University of Oxford, and is currently pursuing her Doctorate in composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Her breakthrough as a composer came as an 18-year-old in 2013 when she won the BBC Young Composer of the Year, the first of a series of awards and prizes - including the Rosamond Prize, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s Christopher Brooks Prize (2017) and the Royal Philharmonic Society Composition Prize (2018) - that has ‘brought Grace-Evangeline Mason to national attention as a composer of striking candour.’ [Richard Powell] This saw her working with leading ensembles and artists including members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Manchester Camerata, the Aurora Orchestra and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, with works presented by leading UK arts organisations including the Cheltenham Festival, Southbank Centre, the Three Choirs Festival, and the BBC Proms.
2016 brought The Yellow Wallpaper, Mason’s first operatic work, a compact 20-minute chamber opera for three singers and five instrumentalists, based on the pioneering short story of the same name by American novelist Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935). The drama is centred on a nameless young woman’s descent into psychosis as her mental health issues, namely post-natal depression, are left misunderstood; her spiralling despair matched by the opera’s chilling sonic disintegration. The opera was premiered successfully by the Helios Collective at English National Opera’s Lilian Baylis Studios and received its first North American staging in 2019 by 23Degree Theatre in Montreal.
Mason made her BBC Proms debut as a composer in 2017 with the chamber orchestra work RIVER, commissioned by the BBC Proms and BBC Radio 4 Front Row to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Handel’s Water Music. 'RIVER' was premiered live on BBC Radio 4 by London Early Opera on a boat on the River Thames, reenacting the premiere of Handel’s Water Music, followed by three performances at the 2017 BBC Proms by the Royal Northern Sinfonia under Nicholas McGegan, who subsequently gave the US premiere of the work at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Connecticut, by the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. In 2018 she composed Upon Weightless Wings for large chamber ensemble, commissioned by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society to mark the 21st birthday of Ensemble 10:10. The 12-minute work was premiered under the baton of Clark Rundell in 2018 and performed by The Sound Ensemble in Seattle in 2020.
Other recent works include the string trio Into the Abyss, I throw Roses, which was commissioned by the Park Lane Group and has received multiple performances in the UK, US and Canada since its premiere in 2019 at the Southbank Centre’s SoundState festival. My thoughts fly in at your window for wind and string octet was commissioned by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra to mark its centenary year and premiered by members of the orchestra in 2020. Her orchestral score The Imagined Forest, described as being ‘drawn with pen-and-ink precision and filled with vivid orchestral colour’ [The Times], was premiered at the BBC Proms by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Domingo Hindoyan in 2021 to mark the 150th anniversary of the Royal Albert Hall, London, and has become her most internationally programmed work, travelling to Norway, Italy, Finland, Germany, the USA, and Australia, by orchestras such as the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Sinfonia Lahti, Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, and the Magdeburgische Philharmonie, as well as by the Operaorkestret at the Oslo Opera House, and the Philharmonia Orchestra at Teatro alla Scala, Milano, as part of MiTo SettembreMusica, with further performances scheduled by Chattanooga Symphony, Oulu Sinfonia, and Amarillo Symphony, amongst others. The Water Garden for harp and wind dectet was premiered in 2023 at the Southbank Centre in the Philharmonia Orchestra's Music of Today series and was described as ‘An intricate, luxuriant parade of aqueous imagery’ by The Guardian in a five-star review. Her latest orchestral work, ABLAZE THE MOON, ‘carefully coloured and cannily orchestrated, a love poem with a starry dimension’ [The Times], continues her decade-long relationship with the BBC Proms and was premiered in 2023 by the BBC Philharmonic under Mark Wigglesworth.
Writing for voice continues to play a significant role in Mason’s output, with recent commissions from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society resulting in the youth choir cantata In Her Own Valley (2019) and Mahler’s Letters for choir (2020). Her choral pieces have been performed by the BBC Singers, Commotio, the Sarum Consort, the Philharmonia Baroque Chorale, the LSO Community Choir, and college chapel choirs of Oxford and Cambridge University, amongst others. The RPS co-commissioned A Memory of the Ocean for choir, piano and cello (2023) with support from the Vaughan Williams Foundation and the Netherlands Broadcasting Organization AVROTROS, which was premiered and recorded for album release on Delphian Records by the Bristol Choral Society, with the Dutch premiere given by the Netherlands Radio Choir in October 2023.
Mason was named as the ‘face to watch’ for classical music in The Times 2020 Calendar of the Arts and in 2021 the newspaper selected her as one of five young stars featured at the BBC Proms.
Grace-Evangeline Mason's music is published by Boosey & Hawkes.
April 2024