William Mason
Contact
Watson 209
About
William Mason is a composer, performer, and writer. His eclectic scholarly and performance interests encompass electronic music, avant-garde jazz, and modern composition, alongside an abiding interest in the natural world and the wintry landscapes of his native Maine.
His debut album as a composer + bandleader was with the Will Mason Ensemble, a jazz-inflected septet. That album, Beams of the Huge Night, was released on New Amsterdam Records in 2015. The Boston Globe wrote that Mason’s compositions “balance improvisation and composition, and are shot through with asymmetrical melodies and grooves, grinding harmonies, and atmospheric bouts of stillness.”
Mason also leads and writes the music for the group Happy Place, an avant-rock band of two guitars and two drummers. The band recorded their debut album Northfield, which was released in 2016 on Exit Stencil Records. The New York Times wrote that the band “succeeds at fusing experimental rock and chamber music…The cathartic two-guitar attack has the feel of avant-rock, while the astringent harmony recalls experiments by Charles Ives.”
Recent commissions include pieces for Nouveau Classical Project and Michi Wiancko. Musicians Mason has performed with include Ned Rothenberg, Anna Webber, Matt Mitchell, Leila Bordreuil, Elias Stemeseder, Greg Chudzik, Miles Okazaki, Kate Gentile, Marc Hannaford, and Andrew Smiley.
Mason’s scholarly interests focus on the analysis of electronic and electroacoustic music, music and media theory, and embodied cognition. He is especially interested in the intersection of the tools of the recording studio and the mind’s faculties of imagination and mimesis. He is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Spectral Music, and has authored entries for Grove Music Online. He has presented his work internationally, including at annual meetings of the Society for Music Theory, American Musicological Society, and Society for American Music.
Degrees
Ph.D., Music Theory, Columbia University
MA, Music Theory, Columbia University
B.Mus, Music Performance, Oberlin Conservatory of Music
BA, Politics, Oberlin College
Research + Teaching Interests
•Western music theory
•Music technology (creative/compositional, critical, and historical approaches)
•Media theory
•Embodied music cognition
•Musical timbre
•Modernism and the avant-garde in music and the visual arts in Europe and North America
•Microtonality
•Musical representations of landscape and nature
•Jazz
More generally, I’m motivated by the belief that doing and knowing are inseparable; that creating interesting music requires being curious and open to experimenting; that music is fundamentally social, active, and collaborative; that, because music is non-representational (or at least not obviously representational) it provides an exceptionally potent set of texts/practices for students to use to explore ideas that animate the study of the liberal arts more broadly.
Courses Taught:
Music 114 – Music Theory I: Fundamentals of Harmonic Practice
Music 115 – Music Theory II: Tonal Harmony
Music 198 – Creative and Critical Approaches to Music Technology
Music 308 – Analytic Survey of Western Music
Things I like
6 books that changed how I listen to and think about music:
Becker – Deep Listeners: Music, Emotion, and Trancing
Cox – Music and Embodied Cognition
Cumming – The Sonic Self
Emmerson – Living Electronic Music
Lewis – A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music
Tomlinson – A Million Years of Music
6 scholarly books that aren’t about music but inspire my work:
Braidotti – The Posthuman
Clark – Natural Born Cyborgs
Gombrich – Art and Illusion
Krauss – The Optical Unconscious
Schivelbusch – The Railway Journey
Sobchak – The Address of the Eye
12 Desert Island cds:
Ornette Coleman – Complete Science Fiction Sessions
John Coltrane – Sun Ship
Miles Davis – Miles Smiles
Eric Dolphy – Out to Lunch
Holly Herndon – Platform
Mahalia Jackson – Live at Newport 1958
Keller Quartet – Complete string quartets of György Kurtág
Lightning Bolt – Wonderful Rainbow
Yvonne Loriod – Olivier Messiaen’s “Vingt Regards sur l’Infant Jesus”
Meshuggah – Catch 33
Björk – Post
Radiohead – Kid A
Publications
CDs
Will Mason Ensemble – Beams of the Huge Night. New Amsterdam Records. 2015
Happy Place – Northfield. Exit Stencil Records. 2016.
Books
Oxford Handbook of Spectral Music, co-edited with Amy Bauer and Liam Cagney. Forthcoming.