Musicatlas
Music
- Agnus Dei for SATB and ten instruments
- Cool RED Cool (after Warhol Self Portrait) (flute, alto saxophone, trumpet, percussion, piano, bass)
- Love Among the Ruins (SATB, unaccompanied; OR: SATB and 15 instruments)
- Sones sueño del Maya (symphonic winds and percussion)
- An Imagined Poussin Triptych a fantasia in three movements for string orchestra
- Collage a Trois Trobar for five mixed voices with recorders and percussion
- Aria and Cadenza for solo violin
- Trios cubes chromatique for oboe, clarinet, percussion, cello and harpsichord
- Caravaggio for flute (or oboe), clarinet, percussion, cello and harpsichord
- Mis en scene (for large orchestra)
- Interludium for winds and strings (flute, clarinet, violin, viola and cello)
- Lorca Musica per cello solo
- Two Portraits for Violin and Harp (I. A Winter Landscape; II. Still Life)
- A Meditation on the Flight into Egypt (for string orchestra)
- Concerto in One Movement for Violin and Orchestra
- Missa solemnis in fragminis for mixed chorus and chamber orchestra
- Lines Written in Early Spring (Rhapsody after Wordsworth, 1789) Trio for flute, English horn and piano
- Impromptu for solo piano
- Arabesque and Charleston for violin and jazz ensemble
- The House of Bernarda Alba A ballet in three acts (plus three concert suites for chamber ensemble)
- Pan and Eros a sketch for eight winds
- Souvenir d’Immanuel violin, cello and piano
- Peter Quince at the Clavier setting of the poem by Wallace Stevens, for bass voice and piano
- Morning Hymn fantasia for orchestra after Isaac Watts
Life
Mr. Gordon’s list of works include orchestral and chamber music--vocal and instrumental--as well as scores for theater, dance and film. His music has been called "brilliant" (Philadelphia Inquirer), "stunning" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), "haunting" (Strings Magazine), and "wonderfully idiomatic" (Salt Lake Tribune). He has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including an ASCAP Young Composer award, an Art Futures career grant, a Fellowship to the Composer Conference at Wellesley, an Astral Career Grant from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, several NFMC awards, a grant from SACEM, and a fellowship from the Cliff Dweller Arts Foundation. His work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the United Performing Arts Fund, the American Music Center, the American Composers Forum, the MacArthur Foundation, Meet the Composer, the Wisconsin Arts Board and the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. He has been invited to the Atlantic Center for the Arts, La Napoule Arts Foundation in Cannes, and the Guildhall in London. He is now serving as Composer-in-Residence at the Cliff Dweller Club in Chicago. He has recently been nominated for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Elise Stoeger Prize, an award which recognizes achievement in chamber music composition, with a focus on works written in the last five years.
His music has been featured on the Skylight Chamber Music Series, subscription concerts with the Contemporary Music Consortium in Salt Lake City, the Music 98, 99 and 2000 Festivals in Cincinnati, and the Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In August of 1998, his chamber work, Lines Written in Early Spring, premiered at the Musique Autour des Vieilles Pierres Festival in Normandy, France, and in November, 2000, his Impromptu for solo piano was performed at the Alfio Gigli Festival in Bologna, Italy. The Riverside Symphony, resident orchestra at Columbia University, selected Mr. Gordon’s Concerto in One Movement for Violin and Orchestra for performance and recording during its International New Music program, in May, 1999. His Mise en scene was selected by the Minnesota Orchestra for its Perfect Pitch program. The work was performed and recorded at Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis, in October, 1999.
Recent commissions include the Milwaukee Symphony--which gave the World Premiere of his Millenniumiana on 31 December 1999, Music Director Andreas Delfs conducting--and the Minneapolis-based vocal ensemble Dare to Breathe, which premiered Mr. Gordon’s, Collage a Trois Trobar, at the Weisman Art Gallery in Minneapolis in November, 1999. The work has since received a highly acclaimed Chicago premiere. Cellist Elizabeth Morrow commissioned Lorca Musica per cello solo, a work which freely adapts themes from the composer’s own 1995 ballet, The House of Bernarda Alba, and has performed it extensively in recital across the United States. Fanfare magazine called the work, "the absolute standout ... remarkable." Lorca has been recorded on Ms. Morrow’s debut disc, Soliloquy, available on the Centaur label, and was featured during the World Cello Congress in June, 2000.
Mr. Gordon was selected as a Fellow to the 2000 Composers Conference at Wellesley College, where, during his two week residency, a new chamber work, Sonata da chroma, was performed and recorded. This multi-movement work, for mixed ensemble with harpsichord, was also featured at the Music 2000 Festival in Cincinnati, in June, 2000.
Ensemble Aleph selected Gordon’s chamber work, Caravaggio, for inclusion in the First International Young Composers Forum, held in Cannes, France, 15-25 August, 2000. (Mr. Gordon was the only American composer selected.) Following the ten day residency and rehearsal/public forum performances, Caravaggio received a formal premiere at the Theatre Dunois in Paris, in a series of five concerts, in October, 2000. Through support from the European Community Culture 2000 Program, Ensemble Aleph also toured this work through Greece, Italy and the United Kingdom in 2001. A CD of the program, recorded in Paris, will soon be available. Cool RED Cool, a new work for chamber sextet, (flute, alto saxophone, trumpet, piano, percussion and bass) was awarded first prize in the Andy Warhol Social Observer competition in Philadelphia. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in collaboration with the Philadelphia Classical Symphony, gave the world premiere performance of this work on 13 September, 2000, at the PAFA. (The Philadelphia Inquirer called the work "a stunner ...")
Other recent music includes a new three movement work for string orchestra, An Imagined Poussin Triptych, given world premiere performances during the Riverside Symphony Midwest tour, in March, 2001. Sones sueño del Maya, a newly commissioned work for orchestral winds and percussion based on Pre-Columbian Mayan music, premiered in Milwaukee in November, 2001, and Love Among the Ruins, a new work for mixed choir a capella, is scheduled for a 2003-04 premiere. Interiors of a Courtyard, for the German duo Ahlert & Schwab, will premiere at the La Guitarra Festival in California in September, 2003; and La tristesse durera toujours, commissioned by Ensemble Aleph and funded in part by the French Ministry of Culture, will premiere at the Theatre Dunois in Paris and as part of the Music from the Edge series at the University of Pittsburgh, also in 2003.