Charles Norman Mason is recipient of the 2009 Frost School of Music Distinguished Alumnus Award. Dean Shelton G. Berg will publicly recognize Mason’s achievement at the October 2 opening concert of Festival Miami 2009.

Mason has received many awards for his compositions, including the 2005 Samuel Barber Rome Prize Fellowship, the 1998 Premi Internacional de Composició Musical Ciutat de Tarragona Orchestra Music prize, and a 1994 National Endowment of the Arts Individual Composers Grant.

His works have been commissioned by the Alabama Symphony, the Goliard Ensemble, the Corona Guitar Kvartet (Denmark), the Dale Warland Singers, Karen Bentley Pollick, Craig Hultgren, William DeVan, Mildred Allen, Scott Deal, Wagner Campos, Roderick Ferguson, Atlas Saxophone Quartet, Luna Nova Ensemble, Youth Opera Foundation, Fairbanks Symphony Association, and ONIX ensemble (Mexico), among others. He has held residencies at the Hambidge Center, the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, and the New Music Festival in Bulgaria, and the Seaside Institute in Seaside, Florida, sponsored him as an Escape To Create composer-in-residence.

Mason was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, and has lived in Miami, Indianapolis, and Champaign-Urbana (Illinois). Lately he has been composing and living in the city of Birmingham, Alabama. He studied composition with many well-known composers, including Don Erb, Ben Johnston, Salvatore Martirano, Dennis Kam, and John Melby.

A strong advocate of other composers and new music in general, Mason is executive director of Living Artist Foundation, an organization devoted to promoting new music. He was editor of the Living Music journal for 15 years prior to taking over the foundation in 1999. Mason is also co-founder of the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, an organization whose primary purpose is to present concerts of new music in the Birmingham area. For six years, he was vice-president of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, and is currently chair of the Alabama Music Teachers Association Composition Commissioning program.

In addition, Mason is founder and director of Living Artist Recordings, a nonprofit recording company that is solely dedicated to new music. He teaches composition and theory at Birmingham-Southern College, a private liberal arts college in Birmingham.

Opening night of Festival Miami 2009 will feature the Frost Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Thomas Sleeper performing Schumann’s Overture to Faust, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 (”Emperor”) with faculty soloist Tian Ying, and Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 1.