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Christopher Trapani was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1980. His formative musical encounters included trumpet lessons at age nine, a pawn shop guitar purchased three years later, then piano lessons from the age of fourteen. Christopher first studied composition under Stephen Dankner at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, where he was awarded a Certificate of Artistry in 1998 as the school's first graduate to specialize in composition. Following a year of study with Malcolm Peyton at New England Conservatory in Boston, Christopher transfered to Harvard College, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Music and English and American Literature and Language, studying composition with Bernard Rands and poetry under Helen Vendler. With the support of a Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship, he then traveled to London in 2002 to pursue a Masters of Music degree at the Royal College of Music with Julian Anderson. He then spent four years in Paris, where he held a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts and worked with the French composer Philippe Leroux. Christopher spent the 2007-2008 academic year in Istanbul on a Fulbright grant, then returned to Paris in September 2008 to take part in the composition and music technology cursus at IRCAM.

Christopher is the winner of the 2007 Gaudeamus Prize. He has also won a BMI Student Composer Award (2006) and two Morton Gould Young Composers Awards from ASCAP (2005, 2006), as well as the Bearns Prize from Columbia University (2006) and the 2005 Wayne Peterson Prize from Earplay. His works have twice been featured as jury selections in the Gaudeamus Music Week: in 2006 with Sing Into My Mouth, and in 2007 with Sparrow Episodes. His scores have been performed by the Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Nieuw Ensemble, Asko Ensemble, Earplay, the Netherlands Radio Kamer Filharmonie, members of the Philharmonia Orchestra, the American Composers Orchestra, Ensemble Cairn, members of the Orchestre Nationale de Lorraine, members of the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain, The Tiroler Ensemble für Neue Musik, the Auros Group for New Music, and the Chameleon Arts Ensemble of Boston. He has received commissions from the FleetBoston Celebrity Series (for pianist Sergey Schepkin), as well as the National Endowment for the Arts (for The Providence Singers).

Christopher has taken part in courses at the Conservatoire Américan at Fontainebleau, working under Andre Bon and Allain Gaussin, and in the "Voix Nouvelles" workshop at Royaumont Abbey in 2004, led by Brian Ferneyhough, Luca Francesconi, and Philippe Leroux. He also participated in workshops led by Wolfgang Rihm and Pascal Dusapin at the Centre Acanthes in 2005, and worked with Denys Bouliane and Jean Lesage at the 'Rencontres de Musique Nouvelle' at Domaine Forget in August 2006. He also took part in the New Music Technology summer course at IRCAM in June 2006.

Along with Colombian composer Juan Camilo Hernandez Sanchez and Australian composer Paul Clift, he is a founding member of the Three Hemispheres composers collective, a Paris-based association for the promotion of young composers in France. Christopher is also active as a conductor and a performer, and can often be found playing piano, guitar, or mandolin in reputable establishments on both sides of the Atlantic, from Place Pigalle to the French Quarter.