Sebastian Currier is the recipient of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award. Heralded as "music with a distinctive voice" by The New York Times and as "lyrical, colorful, firmly rooted in tradition, but absolutely new" by the Washington Post, his music has been performed at major venues worldwide by acclaimed artists and orchestras, including Anne-Sophie Mutter, the Berlin Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic, and the Kronos Quartet. His music has been enthusiastically embraced by violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, for whom he wrote Time Machines, which she premiered with the New York Philharmonic in June 2011 and subsequently performed with various orchestras in the United States, Europe, and Asia. He also wrote Aftersong for her, which she performed extensively in the United States and Europe, including Carnegie Hall in New York, the Barbican in London, and the Grosses Festspielhaus in Salzburg. A critic from The London Times said, "if all his pieces are as emotionally charged and ingenious in their use of rethought tonality as this, give me more."
At MacDowell in 2019, Currier completed Waves, a multimedia work for soprano and ensemble, based on Virginia Woolf's The Waves. He also began work on a piece for chorus and electronics in collaboration with physicist Robbert Dijkgraaf and writer Pia de Jong. Last season, Anne-Sophie Mutter premiered his new piano trio GHOST TRIO at Carnegie Hall. His work for violin and orchestra, Aether, was premiered by the Boston Symphony and the Gewandhaus Orchestra in the spring of 2019. The Cincinnati Symphony will premiere Track 8 in April 2020.
