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…

On May 26, Spoleto Festival USA presented three powerful City Symphonies by Michael Gordon and filmmaker Bill Morrison, performed for the first time as a trilogy by the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra.

Gotham (2004) for New York, Dystopia (2008) for Los Angeles, and El Sol Caliente (2015) for Miami Beach celebrate the character of place and how it evolves, pairing image and music to share the energy, chaos and beauty of urban life…

The ferocious piano/percussion quartet Yarn/Wire reprised their 2016 premiere of Material January 28-29 at The Momentary in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Gordon writes:

Outside my window on Desbrosses Street, a giant piledriver is rhythmically knocking a metal column into the earth. From my studio I hear the resonance, a complex palette of ringing overtones which linger in the air for a few seconds and then disappear…

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On June 16 at Korzo Theatre in Den Haag, The Netherlands, the Dutch percussion group Slagwerk Den Haag gives the world premiere of Michael Gordon’s percussion sextet, Timber, an evening-length tour de force.

Scored for six graduated wooden 2x4s, or Simantras (Greek liturgical percussion instruments used by French composer Iannis Xenakis), the work brings the physicality, endurance and technique of percussion performance to a new level…

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…

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…

On Saturday July 1 The Crossing Choir premieres Michael Gordon’s concert-length work, Anonymous Man. The text is drawn from Gordon’s experiences living in a changing neighborhood on a street called Desbrosses in Lower Manhattan, meeting Julia Wolfe (to whom he is married), raising a family, and especially encounters with two homeless men who lived across the street.

The piece reaches a surprising epiphany — after the bombing of the neighboring World Trade Center, and a few years later when one of the homeless men dies and Gordon watches the outpouring of sympathy from the community — that evokes Lincoln’s funeral train going through the streets of Manhattan, including Desbrosses St…