Listen to an audio piece about how composer Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison work together and what went into their 13th collaboration, inspired by the 100th anniversary of the city of Miami Beach.

The composer Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison have been fusing their visions for upwards of 17 years …

news

Bang on a Can All-Stars Premiere Field Recordings

At the Barbican Centre in London, on March 20, 2012, the Bang on a Can All-Stars premiere Field Recordings — with new works by Gordon, Lang and Wolfe. The evening-length project that is as much a mystery as a concert – a kind of ghost story. The ghosts aren’t the physical presence of people gone before, but they are the ghosts of sounds, images, ideas, and voices. Each composer has been asked to find and interact with something recorded before, using the power of music made right in front of us to reach out to other things not present…

writing

Orchestra Hero

The New York Times, The Score

October 31, 2009

What is the hottest thing in music right now? A pair of video games ─ Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Anyone can play. The games allow you to become a member of the band. Each game offers a range of pop music hits on game controllers that look and feel like guitars and drums. What makes these video games so much more impressive than ‘air guitar’ is that through the use of something called the instrument game controller the player actually experiences the visceral feeling of performing music…

writing

Another Sort of Diplomacy

The New York Times, The Score

April 1, 2007

I’m writing from Sicily, where I just arrived with my ensemble, the Michael Gordon Band. We’re playing a concert at the Etna Festival in Catania. As I’m sitting here in this beautiful Italian hotel, I’m thinking about how lucky I am to be able to travel around the world playing music. There’s no way that this could be possible without the weighty investment that most Western and Asian countries make in the arts. Those of us who perform and compose semi-popular music — that is, experimental, art, classical and jazz — cannot survive in the free market like rock, urban and country musicians do…