Imagine yourself walking around an art museum, looking at paintings and sculptures, with live music and sounds coming from different directions: you hear an accordion, a bass clarinet, a soprano, a viola. But this isn’t recorded music from a random playlist coming through speakers. It’s a new work called Invisible Threads, designed to be experienced by wandering around a space with the music floating around you and your fellow audience members.
Christian Mason is the 2025 Grawemeyer Award winner in music composition for Invisible Threads, composed for six singers, bass clarinet, accordion, and string quartet. The libretto is by writer and critic Paul Griffiths, a past collaborator with Mason on The Singing Tree. The Grawemeyer Awards were announced in December 2024, but the winners are in Louisville this week to give lectures and presentations on their work at the University of Louisville.
The idea for Invisible Threads began through conversations between the composer and librettist about fungi, mycelium, and the interconnected system of tree roots in the world beneath our feet. Griffiths’ text, though inspired by mushrooms, is not about anything – its role is to supply the color, timbre, and resonance for the singers. The words are related by sound and phonemes rather than semantics.
Mason’s winning composition was written with a premiere at the Märkisches Museum Witten (Germany) in mind: exploring the spatial possibilities of the different chambers and corners of the gallery. "During this ‘performance installation’ listeners wander freely through the spaces of the gallery," says Mason, "whereas performers conform to a more formalised ritual of spatial-relationships which transform across the duration of the piece."
Listen to my conversation with Mason above this article.
His lecture will be Thursday at 3pm in Bird Hall at the University of Louisville School of Music.
