Alex Mason was a chorister and Organ Scholar at Gloucester Cathedral. He read music at Oxford University where he was Organ Scholar of Worcester College. Scholarships from the Countess of Munster, Ian Fleming and Eric Thompson trusts enabled postgraduate study in improvisation at the Royal Conservatory, The Hague. This was followed by a MMus in choral conducting at the RCM. He became an FRCO aged 18 winning three prizes.

After organist’s posts in London, Alex embarked upon a career in cathedral music first at Lichfield Cathedral where he was Assistant Organist and founder-Director of the Girls’ Choir, and then St Davids Cathedral where he held the posts of Organist and Master of the Choristers and also Artistic Director of the annual music festival. At St Davids he directed the Cathedral Choir on BBC Radio 3 & 4, two CDs for Regent Records, six new commissions, tours of Bulgaria and Germany and established choral scholarships. He has also conducted numerous works for chorus and orchestra with the Dyfed Choir and St Davids Cathedral Festival Chorus. Since 2011 Alex has been Director of the Chapel Choir at Shrewsbury School and a full-time member of the music faculty.

As an organist he is particularly well known as an improviser. He won First Prize and Variation prize in the Grand Prix d’Improvisation, Biarritz, 2001, was runner-up in the Tournemire Prize, St Alban’s, 1997. He has given organ recitals throughout the UK including the City of London Festival and St John's Smith Square and in France, Germany, Ireland, Lebanon, Norway and the USA. He has improvised to silent movies in the Elgar Concert Hall, Birmingham University and Keble College, Oxford and teaches improvisation at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Last year he improvised chorale preludes on the organ of Symphony Hall as part of Ex Cathedra’s liturgical reconstruction of Bach’s St John Passion. He has improvised on BBC Radio 3, Radio France and Catalunya Radio and his CD of improvisations from Gloucester Cathedral ‘Beyond the Score’ was Critic’s Choice in Gramophone in 2001.

As an accompanist and continuo player he works with Ex Cathedra, Tenebrae, saxophonist Christian Forshaw and the Sanctuary Ensemble and has appeared with them in London, Birmingham and at the Bath, Cheltenham and Three Choirs festivals. He has also worked with orchestras such as CBSO and ECO. He has accompanied Duruflé’s Requiem on numerous occasions, with Orfeo Catala at the Palau de la Musica in Barcelona, Tenebrae at St Ouen, Rouen and Ex Cathedra in Symphony Hall. He has recorded for the Signum, Decca and Regent labels, Howard Goodall’s Organ Works (Channel 4) and The Vicar of Dibley (BBC 1) and he was the accompanist for Tenebrae’s recording of Bruckner and Brahms which won the BBC Music Magazine Choral award in 2016. This year he has recorded music by Roxanna Panufnic with Ex Cathedra.

As a composer he has contributed to the Orgelbuchlein Project and his chorale prelude on Ach Gott und Herr received its first performance at Lichfield Cathedral in 2017 and the Sanctuary Ensemble performed a work at the Lindisfarne Festival in the same year. His A Prayer of St David has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and recorded on the Priory and Regent labels and the Birmingham Bach Choir commissioned him to write an organ work for John Joubert’s 80th birthday in 2007, Variations on ‘Torches’.

He has worked on numerous summer schools including the Eton Choral Courses, National Youth Training Choir of Wales and National Children’s Choir of Great Britain. Last year he worked as a repetiteur for the BBC Proms Youth Choir and Orfeo Catala preparing for two concerts at the BBC Proms of John Adams’ Harmonium and Schoenberg Gurrelieder.