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 …
continue readingOn October 14 at Bowling Green State University, Mantra Percussion gives the US premiere of Michael Gordon's percussion sextet, Timber — followed by a North American tour that includes the Canadian premiere on October 22 at the X Avant Festival (with indie rock-duo Buke & Gass).
The new work, an evening-length tour de force scored for six graduated wooden 2x4s brings the physicality, endurance and technique of percussion performance to a new level…
continue readingOn October 14 at Bowling Green State University, Mantra Percussion gives the US premiere of Michael Gordon’s percussion sextet, Timber — followed by a North American tour that includes the Canadian premiere on October 22 at the X Avant Festival (with indie rock-duo Buke & Gass).
The new work, an evening-length tour de force scored for six graduated wooden 2x4s brings the physicality, endurance and technique of percussion performance to a new level…
continue readingOn 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…
continue readingMichael 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…
continue readingSunday July 24, at Caramoor Music Center in Katonah, NY, Michael Gordon’s Field of Vision is premiered by conductor Doug Perkins and the University of Michigan percussion ensemble along with So Percussion Summer Institute Fellows. The work continues up the East Coast to PS 21 in Chatham, NY on Monday July 25, then to North Adams, MA on July 29 for Bang on a Can’s LOUD Weekend at Mass MoCA…
continue reading(…) Concerto Köln, which has about 30 members, is a collective: They own their work and manage themselves. The members are involved in the creation of every project. This is very unusual. Orchestras usually are run from the top down. The board of directors hires the management, which hires the conductor and the orchestra. The low people on the totem pole are the musicians, whose professional lives are dictated to from above. Here with Concerto Köln, and with a few other orchestras that I have worked with (mostly in Europe), management is hired by the orchestra…
continue readingOn April 27, the Melbourne Symphony gives the Australian premiere of Michael Gordon’s Dystopia at the 2012 Metropolis New Music Festival.
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…
continue readingCommissioning Rushes
by Dana Jessen
http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/commissioning-rushes/
As musicians, we frequently talk about the process of composing music. Most often we discuss the various methods a composer goes through to realize his or her work. Yet there is another facet of such an undertaking that often isn’t discussed—the performer’s side of commissioning a large-scale work. On September 15th, six colleagues and I gave the world premiere of Rushes, a new 60-minute composition for seven bassoons by Michael Gordon…
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