Composer Quinn Mason is HSO’s first artist-in-residence under new Black-artists grant

Classical composer Quinn Mason intends to make the most of a new yearlong residency that he begins this year with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, coming frequently to Connecticut and using those experiences to fuel a new composition, which the orchestra will premiere in June 2023.

“I will be making four visits during the season. The first time will be in September,” Mason said in a phone interview Thursday afternoon. “I want to get to know the community at large. I want to generate public interest in the Hartford Symphony. I want to do outreach because I myself am a product of it — I attended my first classical music concert at age 10 as part of a class field trip.”

The residency exists due to the Joyce C. Willis Fund for Excellence and Equity in the Arts, founded in 2020 to support prominent young Black artists of national stature in creating new works for major Hartford arts institutions. Mason, who is based in Texas, says he has already had several conversations about the residency with Tim Brown, the HSO’s director of learning and social impact.

The composer sees the residency as a special opportunity.

[ HSO announces Gershwin, Rachmaninoff and breakdancing for 2022-23 Masterwork season ]

“This will have a cool structure. It’s different from what I usually do with residencies. I usually go in for a week, sometimes just a few days. Depending on what else is on the program, I’m lucky if I get 30 minutes to talk to the orchestra. For this one, I’ll be able to get to know the players.”

Mason is an accomplished classical conductor as well as being a composer. He was invited by the symphony to conduct this premiere of his own work, but demurred because of his admiration for HSO Music Director Carolyn Kuan.

“I’ve known of Carolyn for a while, because we both studied at different times with Marin Alsop,” said Mason, who was the first conductor to receive a MacArthur “genius” award.

“Carolyn is an amazing conductor. Why wouldn’t I want her to conduct this?,” he says he told the symphony.

Though he’s composed chamber and solo works and in college once created on a piece for three bass drums, Mason says, “I specialize in writing for orchestras. Whenever you write for an orchestra, you write for all its different qualities, the sounds and the timbres.”

Mason, who’s still in his early 20s, has already had other residencies with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the Austin, Texas, classical music station KMFA.

Among his works is “Reflection on a Memorial,” an open-ended piece scored for a string ensemble that can be used for a variety of contemplative memorial events. That piece alone has been performed by more than a dozen orchestras. His other orchestral works include “Irish Dance Suite”; “Svítání” (the title is a Czech word meaning “dawn” and the piece is about rebirth and renewal following the pandemic, protests and other turbulent issues of recent years; and “Petite Symphonie de Chambre Contemporaine (après Milhaud),” a response to a 1921 chamber work by the French composer Darius Milhaud.

“Reflection on a Memorial” and “Svítání” demonstrate how Mason brings not just a stylistic range to his work but a thematic one. “‘Svítání’ is kind of the opposite of ‘Reflection on a Memorial,’” the composer says, with “Reflection” being a reaction to a sad event that’s just happened and ‘Svítání’ being “about rebirth, looking forward. It’s hopeful.”

When it revealed its 2022-23 MasterWorks season line-up in May, the HSO announced that the final concerts of that season, June 9 to 11, would include a work by its Willis Fund artist-in-residence but did not mention whom that composer might be. Also on the program for that season-ending concert is Iain Bell’s “Stonewall Suite” and Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” symphony.

[ Hartford Symphony announces Gershwin, Rachmaninoff and breakdancing for 2022-23 Masterwork season ]

When Joyce C. Willis, a longtime patron of the arts in Hartford, died in 2020, the Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation created a fund to support residencies for Black artists at three major Hartford arts institutions: Hartford Stage, the HSO and the Amistad Center for Art & Culture. The Amistad Center was the first to announce the recipient of its residency grant: New Haven-based photographer Merik Goma. Hartford Stage announced earlier this year that the artist-in-residence there would be recent Geffen School of Drama at Yale graduate Christopher Betts, who will direct “Trouble in Mind” for the theater next season and a yet-to-be-announced play for the season after that.

[ With 3 grants honoring Hartford woman, foundation to bring Black artists into major institutions ]

Lisa M. Curran, executive director of The Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation, administers 40 to 50 grants a year for the foundation, working with nine volunteer board members.

“Hartford Symphony did something a little different with this residency,” Curran says. “We gave them $150,000 and a suggested a two-year residency for one artist, but they decided to do three residences at $50,000 a year.”

The other two artists have yet to be announced.

Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.

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