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Chamber Choir of Ireland

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 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…

Read more…

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…

It’s been a long time coming, but Shelter is finally here!

The latest collaborative work by Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe is a modern oratorio that reunites the Bang on a Can founders with Deborah Artman (author of the libretto for 2001’s Lost Objects). Produced by Michael Riesman, this premiere recording was performed by Ensemble Signal under the baton of conductor Brad Lubman, and features solo voices Martha Cluver, Mellissa Hughes and Caroline Shaw…

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…

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…

Available now on iTunes and (in stunning wooden case) at Cantaloupe Music. Listen to NPR’s All Things Considered review.

Timber’s wooden CD case

a 10min video about Timber

On August 30, Michael Gordon’s new percussion sextet, Timber, is released in a very cool wooden CD case on Cantaloupe Music, but is available now for download through iTunes…

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…

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…