News – Michael Gordon

Miller Theatre Composer Portrait Concert

April 25, 2016

Material
world premiere
May 11-12
Miller Theatre

A new concert-length work for 2 pianists and 2 percussionists; an immersive environment for a uniquely intimate, multisensory series of four portrait concerts over two nights at Columbia University’s legendary new-music mecca!

Columbia University’s iconic Miller Theatre presents the next installment of their Portrait concerts on May 11 and 12, with a new 90-minute world premiere, called Material, for two pianos and two percussionists, performed by New York City’s Yarn/Wire…

Rushes NYC premiere

October 22, 2015

Michael Gordon’s mesmerizing concert-length work, Rushes for 7 bassoons, receives its New York City premiere on October 23 at the Park Avenue Armory performed by The Rushes Ensemble.

Released last year on Cantaloupe Music, Rushes takes its place alongside Gordon’s Timber for expanding the boundaries of a single instrument’s repertoire into hitherto unknown (and at times, otherworldly) spaces…

Gene Takes a Drink featured in iPhone commercial

June 17, 2015

Michael Gordon’s sextet for the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Gene Takes a Drink, is featured in one of the latest batches of “Shot on iPhone” commercials.

Purchase track from iTunes here.

Rent the performance materials here.

Michael Gordon’s new album Dystopia

February 25, 2015

WQXR/Q2’s Album of the Week
click here to stream the album and read their review

Michael Gordon’s newest album, Dystopia, which includes Rewriting Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony (plus an iTunes exclusive, Gotham), includes some of his most ambitious orchestral projects to date. These works are monumental statements of Gordon’s passion for pushing the modern symphony to its extremes.

The title piece, Dystopia, a city symphony for Los Angeles, was commissioned and premiered by the Los Angeles Philharmonic…

new work for the New World Symphony

July 18, 2014

On January 30, 2015, Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony premiere the third installment in Gordon’s “city symphonies” for Miami, Florida, after Gotham (New York City) and Dystopia (Los Angeles).

Working in collaboration with filmmaker Bill Morrison, Gordon creates music with his own reflections for each city. Miami is special for Gordon — it is his hometown.

US Premiere @ Spoleto: Rewriting Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony

June 3, 2014

On June 3, John Kennedy and the Spoleto Festival Orchestra present the US Premiere of Michael Gordon’s monumental Rewriting Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

Commissioned by the Beethoven-Bonn Festival and premiered by the Bamberger Symphoniker in 2006, Rewriting Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony filters one of the classics of the symphonic repertoire through the lens of the 21st-century. Not looking to improve on the work’s timeless quality, Gordon imagined “what if someone unknowingly used this material in the course of writing his or her new work?”

Gordon writes:

Beethoven’s brutish and loud music has always inspired me…

Rushes CD Release (3/25) and Tour

January 30, 2014

On March 25, Cantaloupe Music releases Michael Gordon’s latest CD, Rushes. From March 26 – 29, Michael Gordon’s Rushes, for 7 bassoons, goes on tour in the Northeast culminating in a much-anticipated performance at Peak Performances at Montclair State University.

March 26: Tufts University
March 28: Crane Arts Center
March 29: Peak Performances

Gordon describes the concert-length, mesmerizing work:

Years ago I pursed my lips and blew into a bassoon, and felt the entire instrument buzz as I droned on the very bottom note, a B flat…

Steve Schick and the SFCMP perform Timber on November 14

November 12, 2013

On November 14 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the percussionists of the San Francisco Contemporary Players perform Michael Gordon’s acclaimed, hypnotic, epic concert-length work Timber for 6 percussionists.

Scored for six graduated, amplified, wooden simantras (2x4s) the work brings the physicality, endurance and technique of percussion performance to a new level. In this work, Gordon shapes the music in both polyrhythmic and dynamic waves of textures — often each players’ hands are in separate rhythmic ‘worlds’, each traversing a different dynamic contour from loud to soft to loud, similar in some respects to his solo for percussion, XY…

Crash Ensemble premieres Dry at Kilkenny Festival

July 19, 2013

The fortieth annual Kilkenny Festival in Ireland presents the newest work by Michael Gordon, called Dry, written for and premiered by the Crash Ensemble.

Over the last 16 years, Crash Ensemble has established itself as a “a powerhouse of new music” (The Irish Times) renowned for commissioning, producing and performing the most adventurous and exciting works both from established international composers like Steve Reich and Kevin Volans and up-and-coming fresh talent…

Van Gogh at Long Beach Opera May 11-19

April 22, 2013

From May 11-19, Long Beach Opera stages Michael Gordon’s opera Van Gogh.

Based on Vincent Van Gogh’s letters to his beloved younger brother Tlusteheo, an art dealer and often Vincent’s sole means of personal and financial support, Gordon’s powerful opera has been praised by the San Francisco Chronicle as “puls[ing] with a distinctive brand of emotional energy that is hard to resist.”

Gordon writes:

I started composing Van Gogh because of my obsession with the letters Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo…