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So Percussion Summer Institute (SoSI)

20 years ago, just a few months after the world-changing events of 9/11, Michael Gordon traveled to Switzerland to see the Basel Sinfonietta and conductor Kasper de Roo premiere his concert-length work for orchestra, Decasia, which accompanied a film by Bill Morrison — now itself a cult classic that is studied in film schools around the world.

View the score, watch film excerpt, and listen to complete work, click here

“The music’s purely visceral power [is] hard to resist.” — The New York Times

“…its incessant pulses – by turns buoyant and threatening – support a sound world in which the amplified instruments, carefully tuned microtones apart, create layers of fiercely dissonant harmony, punctuated by beats and difference tones…

Over 2 consecutive weekends this month (April 14 and 21) Mantra Percussion performs my percussion sextet, Timber, in six incredible, unexpected resonant spaces across New York City: Castle Clinton (Manhattan), Federal Hall (Manhattan), DUMBO Archway (Brooklyn), Queens Boulevard 7-Train Viaduct (Queens), Endale Archway in Prospect Park (Brooklyn), Prison Ship Martyrs’ Monument in Fort Greene Park (Brooklyn)…

On May 7, London’s Barbican Centre presents the BBC Symphony in the UK premiere of Michael Gordon’s Rewriting Beethoven’s 7th Symphony. Commissioned by the Beethoven-Bonn Festival and premiered by the Bamberger Symphoniker in 2006, Gordon’s remarkable re-imagining filters one of the classics of the classics through the lens of the 21st-century. Not looking to improve on the work’s timeless quality, but to imagine ‘what if someone unknowingly used this material in the course of writing his or her new work?’

Gordon writes:

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

On Saturday, September 15, Michael Gordon’s newest work, Rushes for 7 bassoons, is premiered by the Rushes Ensemble at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, NY.

The new work is a 60+ minute tour-de-force that takes some inspiration from his recent work for percussion, Timber. In the new work Gordon shifts polyrhythmic material not only through timbre and dynamics, but by weaving melodic lines into the kaleidoscopic waves of rhythmic texture…

On Thursday, November 8, Michael Gordon’s newest work, Rushes for 7 bassoons, is given its European premiere by the Rushes Ensemble at the November Music Festival in Den Boasch followed by a tour in The Netherlands and Belgium:

November 10 – GLOW Festival in Eindoven
November 11 – Rushes and Timber at the SURROUND Festival in Brugge
November 15 – Ostadetheater in Amsterdam
November 16 – Korzo Theater in Den Haag

The new work is a 60+ minute tour-de-force that takes some inspiration from his recent work for percussion, Timber…

Mantra Percussion’s New York premiere of Timber at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, December 13-15, has been listed as one of the top ten performances for 2012 by Alex Ross (The New Yorker) and Steve Smith (TimeOut New York).

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…

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…

July 29-30, the Britt Music & Arts Festival, presents the world premiere of Michael Gordon’s newest work for orchestra, Natural History, inspired by Crater Lake National Park in Oregon and commissioned by the Britt Orchestra as part of the 100th anniversary of America’s National Park Service.

Natural History will premiere the morning of July 29, 2016, on the rim of the lake at a location that Gordon scouted, with musicians spatially situated around the site…