Mason’s style of composition he refers to as Hyper-Connectivism. He defines Hyper-Connectivism as follows: “The word Connective refers to the idea of disparate parts working together towards a common goal. The term Hyper refers to on the one hand, the edge where great things happen; on the other hand to the point where at any moment, all could fall into disarray, the border right before chaos.”

CHARLES NORMAN 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..

Among the commissions he has received are commissions from 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).

He has held residencies at the Hambidge Center, the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, the ppIianissimo New Music Festival in Bulgaria, and was sponsored by the Seaside Institute as a "Escape To Create" composer-in-residence at Seaside, Florida.

Charles N. 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. . He has studied composition with many renowned composers including Don Erb, Ben Johnston, Salvatore Martirano, Dennis Kam, and John Melby. He holds a doctorate in music composition from the University of Illinois.

An strong advocate of other composers and new music in general, Dr. Mason is executive director of Living Artist Foundation, an organization devoted to promoting new music. Mason was editor of the Living Music journal for fifteen 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 U. S., and is currently chairman of the Alabama Music Teachers Association Composition Commissioning program. Finally, he is founder and director of Living Artist Recordings a non-profit 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, Alabama.