Michael Gordon | |
|---|---|
 Michael Gordon at Crater Lake | |
| Born | (1956-07-20)July 20, 1956 (age 69) |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupations | Composer, Professor of Music |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 2 |
| Website | michaelgordonmusic |
Michael Gordon (born July 20, 1956) is an Americancomposer and co-founder of theBang on a Can music collective and festival. He grew up inNicaragua.
Michael Gordon was born inMiami Beach,Florida on July 20, 1956. He grew up inNicaragua on the outskirts ofManagua in an Eastern European Jewish community before moving back to Miami Beach at age eight.
Gordon's music is an outgrowth of his experience with underground rock bands in New York City and his formal training in composition atYale where he studied withMartin Bresnick. He is based in New York City.[1]
Gordon is one of the founders and artistic directors of New York'sBang on a Can Festival, alongside fellow composersJulia Wolfe—his wife—andDavid Lang. He has collaborated with them on several projects.
The operaThe Carbon Copy Building,[2] a collaboration with comic book artistBen Katchor, received the 2000Village VoiceObie Award for Best New American Work. A projected comic strip accompanies and interacts with the singers, and the frames fall away in the telling of the story.
Gordon, Wolfe and Lang subsequently collaborated with librettist Deborah Artman on the 'oratorio'Lost Objects, the recording of which was released in summer 2001 (Teldec New Line).[3]
A further project isShelter,[4] a multi-media work that was commissioned by the ensemblemusikFabrik and features theScandinavian vocalistsTrio Mediaeval in a staged spectacle that, in the words of librettist Deborah Artman, "evokes the power and threat of nature, the soaring frontier promise contained in the framing of a new house, the pure aesthetic beauty of blueprints, the sweet architecture of sound and the uneasy vulnerability that underlies even the safety of our sleep."[5]Shelter was premiered in Cologne in Germany in spring 2005, and received its US premiere in November 2005.
BothShelter andCarbon Copy Building were staged by New York's Ridge Theater, in collaboration with Laurie Olinder (visual graphics),Bill Morrison (filmmaker) and Bob McGrath (director), with whom Gordon has often worked. The operaChaos, with libretto by Matthew Maguire, premiered atThe Kitchen in New York in the autumn of 1998 with stage direction by Bob McGrath. The work, which opened to rave reviews and packed houses, is a fast-paced science fiction spectacle in 25 short scenes.[6]
In 2017, Chinese singerGong Linna premieredCloud River Mountain, written by the three Bang on a Can composers in addition toLao Luo. They also premieredRoad Trip, a celebration of Bang on a Can's 30-year journey, together at theBrooklyn Academy of Music in October 2017.[7]
Gordon's music incorporates elements of dissonance, minimalism, modality, and popular culture.
His music has been presented atLincoln Center for the Performing Arts,Carnegie Hall,The Proms, theBrooklyn Academy of Music, the Sydney 2000 Olympic Arts Festival, theKennedy Center,The Kitchen, the Kölner Philharmonie,Royal Albert Hall, the Bonn Oper, and theJewish Museum Vienna, as well as at the Rotterdam, Edinburgh, St. Petersburg, Holland, Adelaide, Huddersfield, Settembre Musica and Dresden music festivals. In addition, his music has been choreographed byEliot Feld,The Royal Ballet, Emio Greco | PC,Wayne McGregor (forStuttgart Ballet,Random Dance),Pina Bausch'sTanztheater Wuppertal,Heinz Spoerli (for Zürich Ballet), Ashley Page (forThe Royal Ballet and theScottish Ballet), andClub Guy & Roni.[8] In 2017,Douglas Lee choreographed a Gordon score for theBallett Zürich, and in 2018 Brian Brooks choreographed another score for theMiami City Ballet.[9] Gordon is also a featured artist in the repertoires ofEnsemble Modern,Alarm Will Sound, and theKronos Quartet.
Since 1991, Gordon has worked extensively with video. His workVan Gogh Video Opera, a collaboration with video artist Elliott Caplan, premiered to critical acclaim in New York in 1991 and received its European premiere in Vienna in 1992.[10] Other works with Caplan includeGrand Dairy, based on a diner on New York's Lower East Side, which was produced in Vienna in 1996, andWeather (German Tour 1997), in which the 16 string players ofEnsemble Resonanz perform on a vertical stage surrounded by video panels. The recording ofWeather is available onArthrob/Nonesuch Records. In 1997 he worked with playwrightAnna Deavere Smith onHouse Arrest, First Edition, which premiered at theArena Stage Theater in Washington, DC.[11]
Gordon's percussion sextetTimber was written for the percussion ensembles Slagwerk Den Haag and Mantra Percussion. This work, an evening-length piece for six 2x4s, toured with dance throughout 2009–10 and was premiered in its concert version in June 2011. The full percussion sextet was released on Cantaloupe Music in 2011. In 2014–15 it was played inWalt Disney Concert Hall (performed bySo Percussion and members of theLos Angeles Philharmonic), in Belgium (by Ictus), and in Scandinavia (by Nordic Seks).[12] Other recent pieces for single-instrument ensembles includeRushes for seven bassoons andAmplified for four electric guitars.[13]
Decasia, a large-scale symphony with projections commissioned by the Europäischer Musikmonat 2001 for theBasel Sinfonietta, was also staged by the Ridge Theater. The orchestra sits on a triangular pyramid structure that surrounds the audience, while Bill Morrison's film of black and white 'found' footage in various states of deterioration is projected onto scrim draping the structure. The ensuing Bill Morrison film,Decasia, cut to Michael Gordon's complete score, was shown at the 2002Sundance Film Festival and has been screened at film festivals worldwide.[14]
Other large-scale symphonic works includeRewriting Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, a revised composition ofBeethoven’s original symphony, commissioned by the 2006 Beethoven Festival in Bonn and premiered byJonathan Nott and theBamberg Symphony,[15] andSunshine of your Love, written for over 100 instruments divided into four microtonally tuned groups. Under the baton of composer/conductorJohn Adams, theEnsemble Modern touredSunshine of your Love to seven European capitals in 1999.[16]
In 2008, Gordon collaborated with Ridge Theater again on the multi-performer song-cycle Lightning at our Feet, co-commissioned byCynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at theUniversity of Houston and theBrooklyn Academy of Music for theNext Wave Festival.Lightning at our Feet putsEmily Dickinson's poetry to music and encompasses her words in a world of visual imagery.[17] A further collaboration with Ridge Theater,Gotham, a commission from theAmerican Composers Orchestra, incorporates film, projections, lighting and an orchestra of 35 musicians to explore the 'other' New York City. Directed by Bob McGrath, the work premiered at Carnegie'sZankel Hall in February 2004 with the American Composers Orchestra and combines Bill Morrison's archival and original footage of New York with Laurie Olinder's photographic projections of the urban landscape.[18] Gordon and Morrison's works together also includeDystopia about Los Angeles, written in 2008 forDavid Robertson and theLos Angeles Philharmonic, andEl Sol Caliente about Miami Beach, commissioned by theNew World Symphony for the 100th anniversary of the city.[19] The two also collaborated on a piano concerto for Tomoko Mukayaima and theSeattle Symphony in 2016 calledThe Unchanging Sea.
Gordon has worked extensively with London'sIcebreaker. His workYo Shakespeare was recorded by Icebreaker on their debutArgo/Decca recordingTerminal Velocity, recently re-released byCantaloupe Music.[20] Gordon's workTrance was written for Icebreaker with the additional component of eight brass players. The 52-minute work was also originally recorded for Argo and was released in the autumn of 1996; a new re-mixed version is now on Cantaloupe Music.[21]Link was written for the group in 1998, in collaboration withDavid Lang, as a complementary piece toYo Shakespeare and Lang'sCheating, Lying, Stealing for a new ballet byAshley Page forThe Royal Ballet in London, subsequently revived by Page at theScottish Ballet.[22]
In 2004 Gordon releasedLight Is Calling (Nonesuch), an album of tracks created with producersR. Luke DuBois and Damian LeGassick, and scored for a small ensemble of musicians (most notablyTodd Reynolds on violin) with complex electronic arrangements orchestrated by DuBois and LeGassick.[23] He has since collaborated with DuBois extensively on the electronic backing arrangements for subsequent pieces, includingAll Vows for cellistMaya Beiser (2006, for which DuBois also served as a video artist),[24]Sad Park for theKronos Quartet (2006), and the operaWhat to Wear, libretto byRichard Foreman (2006).The Sad Park uses the voices of child witnesses to September 11 as its subject.[25]
Gordon’sNatural History, inspired byCrater Lake National Park in Oregon and commissioned by theBritt Festival, was performed in July 2016 on the rim of the lake itself, as part of the 100th anniversary of America’sNational Park Service. The premiere was performed by forty members of the Britt Orchestra, a chorus of fifty regional choristers, fifteen members of Steiger Butte Drum, whose members are all from the localKlamath Tribes, and thirty brass and percussionists fromSouthern Oregon University.[26]
Gordon had three world premieres in the spring of 2016:The Unchanging Sea, a piano concerto for Tomoko Mukayaima and theSeattle Symphony, with video by Bill Morrison;[27]Material, for four-person percussion and piano ensemble Yarn/Wire, playing one piano;[28] andObservations on Air, a bassoon concerto for Peter Whelan and theOrchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.[29] In 2017The Crossing premieredAnonymous Man, a choral memoir, based on conversations that Gordon has had with a homeless man living on his street.Big Space, which premiered at the 2017BBC Proms, distributes the musicians throughout the audience.
The recipient of multiple awards and grants, Gordon has been honored by theGuggenheim Foundation,[30] theNational Endowment for the Arts, a 2002Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award,[31] and theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters. Formed in 1983 as the "Michael Gordon Philharmonic" and renamed the "Michael Gordon Band" in 2000, Gordon's own ensemble has performed across Europe and the United States at venues such asAlice Tully Hall and the punk meccaCBGB, on the Contemporary Music Network Tour, and at the Almeida Festival in London.[32] In September 2016 Gordon was named the first-ever composer-in-residence of theYoung People's Chorus of New York City.
