Sebastian Currier is the 2007 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.

A full evening of his chamber music was presented by the Berlin Philharmonic last fall, which included two premieres. This fall he returned to Berlin again for the premiere of Broken Minuets, performed by harpist Marie-Pierre Langlamet and the Oriol Ensemble at the Philharmonie.

His music has been enthusiastically embraced by violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, for whom he wrote Aftersong, which she performed extensively in the US and Europe, including Carnegie Hall in New York, Symphony Hall in Boston, 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." He is currently writing her a concerto.

His Microsymph, referred to by the composer as a large-scale symphony that has been squeezed into only ten minutes, was commissioned by the American Composer Orchestra and premiered at Carnegie Hall. It has also been performed by such orchestras as the San Francisco Symphony, the Gewandhuas Orchestra, Eos Orchestra, and the National Symphony Orchestra, and has been recorded by the Frankfurt Radio Orchestra with Hugh Wolff, conductor.

He has also written works that involve electronic media and video. Nightmaze, a multimedia piece based on a text of Thomas Bolt in which the protagonist dreams he is rushing along a dark, enormous highway, where strange roadsigns loom up only to disappear into the night, has been performed by Network for New Music and the Mosaic Ensemble. The Philadelphia Inquirer said "every turn is breathtaking" and the New York Times, "Currier's rich and imaginative music sets the right tone, with its fractured and dissonant baroque-like gestures leading off like highway exits into the void and hinting at distant reservoirs of emotion and yearning."

His new CD of string quartets, recorded by the Cassatt Quartet, says the New York Times, "distances the present from the past, causing the listener to think about music itself." A CD of mixed chamber music, recorded by Music from Copland House will be released shortly.

He has received many prestigious awards including the Berlin Prize, Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has held residencies at the MacDowell and Yaddo colonies. He received a DMA from the Juilliard School and his works are published by Carl Fischer.  www.sebastiancurrier.com.

Sebastian was raised in North Providence and graduated from LaSalle Academy.