On April 27, the Melbourne Symphony gives the Australian premiere of Michael Gordon's Dystopia at the 2012 Metropolis New Music Festival. Click here to listen to Gordon discuss the piece and to watch video excerpts.
Ensemble Modern premiere
On Saturday January 28, the world-renowned Ensemble Modern gives the world premiere of Michael Gordon's newest work, Cold. This marks the fourth commission for Gordon from Ensemble Modern, who premiered his Sunshine of Your Love; Vera, Chuck, and Dave; and Love Bead.
Gordon describes the new work: 'What is it we talk about when we talk about music? Melody, Harmony, Emotion. These are things that add warmth to a piece of music. I wondered what it would be like to take the warmth away — to approach the music from a different view — like walking out into the tundra. I imagined making a piece of music cold.'
To explore all of Michael Gordon's works for chamber ensembles large and small, please click here.
World premiere: new work for chorus
On November 29, Paul Hillier conducts the Coro Casa da Musica in Porto, Portugal in the world premiere of Michael Gordon's The Bird Watcher for chorus. Click here for more info!
Timber US premiere and tour
On October 14 at Bowling Green State University, Mantra Percussion gives the US premiere of Michael Gordon's percussion sextet, Timber -- followed by a North American tour that includes the Canadian premiere on October 22 at the X Avant Festival (with indie rock-duo Buke & Gass).
The new work, an evening-length tour de force scored for six graduated wooden 2x4s brings the physicality, endurance and technique of percussion performance to a new level.
Mantra Percussion Tour
10/14 US Premiere - Bowling Green State University
10/16 Elastic Arts with Darin Gray of Brise-Glace and On Fillmore (Chicago)
10/17 Northern Illinois University
10/18 The Yellow Barn (Ann Arbor)
10/19 Village Gate (Rochester)
10/20 University of Buffalo
10/22 Canadian Premiere - X Avant Festival with Buke & Gass (Toronto)
11/9 Percussive Arts International Convention (Indianapolis) with So Percussion, Steve Schick, Cincinatti Percussion Group and Doug Perkins
11/10 Artsgarden (Indianapolis)
11/11 Crane Arts' Ice Box Theatre (Philadelphia)
11/12 MIT's Kresge Auditorium with the Bang On A Can All-Stars (Cambridge)
In Timber, 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.
Much of Gordon's music demonstrates a deep exploration into the extreme possibilities and stunning nature of rhythm, as well as the enriching, yet disturbing, multidimensionality of polyrhythmic layers — what has been termed in his music to be, 'glorious confusion.' Gordon's works, including Trance, Gotham, and Decasia, point to his interest in complex rhythmic and textural territory. His percussion sextet takes these elements and explores the extreme possibilities of rhythm and texture to a beautifully intense degree. The new evening-length work is indeed a unique and exciting addition to the world of percussion.
This new percussion sextet is an evening-length tour de force scored for six graduated wooden 2x4s, also known as 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.
In this new 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.
Much of Gordon's music demonstrates a deep exploration into the extreme possibilities and stunning nature of rhythm, as well as the enriching, yet disturbing, multidimensionality of polyrhythmic layers — what has been termed in his music to be, 'glorious confusion.' Gordon's works, including Trance, Gotham, and Decasia, point to his interest in complex rhythmic and textural territory. His percussion sextet takes these elements and explores the extreme possibilities of rhythm and texture to a beautifully intense degree. The new evening-length work is indeed a unique and exciting addition to the world of percussion.
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.
In this new 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.
Much of Gordon's music demonstrates a deep exploration into the extreme possibilities and stunning nature of rhythm, as well as the enriching, yet disturbing, multidimensionality of polyrhythmic layers.
Many of his works, including Trance, Gotham, and Decasia, point to this interest in complex rhythmic and textural territory. Gordon's percussion sextet takes these elements and explores the extreme possibilities of rhythm and texture to a beautifully intense degree. The new evening-length work is indeed a unique and exciting addition to the world of percussion.
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?'
Beethoven's brutish and loud music has always inspired me. At the time it was written, it was probably the loudest music on the planet. The raw power of his orchestral writing burned through the style of the time.
A commission by the Beethoven-Fest Bonn gave me the opportunity to ask this question: What if someone, while writing a piece of music for orchestra, just happened to stumble over the same material that Beethoven used? What if someone unknowingly used this material in the course of writing his or her new work?
In Rewriting Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, I retained one essential musical idea from each movement of the original work. From the first movement, I couldn't resist working with the huge barbaric opening chords. From the second movement, I took the divine and other-worldly theme, adjusting it slightly so that when it ends, it is in a key one half-step higher. The theme continues to cycle around and slowly spirals up. From the third movement, I lifted the background accompaniment and brought it to the foreground. From the fourth movement I used the main theme.
Did this 'rewriting' transform the music, or did the music transform me? Throughout the process I questioned, Who am I to take these precious notes and mash them into clay? But at a certain point I simply got lost in the material. I reveled in its power. I forgot about these questions in my mind. I forgot about Beethoven. — Michael Gordon, 2006
Kronos Premieres
The Kronos Quartet has been a long-time champion of the music of Michael Gordon, having commissioned Sad Park in 2006 and Potassium in 2000. This fall, they premiere two brand new pieces by Gordon: Clouded Yellow, with a world premiere at Dartmouth on October 2nd and at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City on October 9th, and another world premiere, Exalted, for string quartet and chorus, for which they will join forces with the Young People’s Chorus of New York City at Le Poisson Rouge
Listen to Francisco Nuñez and 3 of his choristers from the Young People's Chorus of NYC talk about their work on Gordon's Exalted.
Gordon's Opera at VOX 2010
Every year, New York City Opera's innovative program VOX presents works from both emerging and established composers in orchestra readings that are free and open to the public. On May 1, VOX performs Michael Gordon's 2005 opera Acquanetta. A story based on a 1940s B-movie star, Acquanetta, whose career ended when she married a car salesman and moved to Arizona.
In Gordon's opera, the mock serious, campy spirit of B-movies is turned inside out in a bravura, one-act deconstruction of the extraordinary 1943 cult-classic, Captive Wild Woman where a mad doctor conducts a doomed experiment: he transplants a human female's brain (and her glands) into a gorilla. It appears to succeed, but backfires when his voluptuous experiment regresses back into an ape.
The opera's cast includes the mad Doctor, the insistent Ape, the Brainy Woman (who reluctantly donates her brain to the experiment), the visionary Director and the beautiful monster herself, Acquanetta. In song, these vivid characters speak both as the actors playing their roles and as the characters within the narrative. Acquanetta is about identity: who we play versus who we are; who we reveal and who we hide. The opera reveals the character's inner longings in what is ultimately a meditation on the meaning of identity, transformation, stereotypes, and typecasting... set in the heyday of Hollywood B-movie glitz.
Nonesuch released Michael Gordon's Yo Shakespeare on new Alarm Will Sound record, September 15
Nonesuch released a/rhythmia, the new album from Alarm Will Sound, the 20-member group described by the New York Times as “one of the most vital and original ensembles on the American music scene," on September 15; it is available to order now in the Nonesuch Store. On the album are works by Michael Gordon, Conlon Nancarrow, Benedict Mason, György Ligeti, and Autechre, among others, that challenge in playful and often dazzling ways conventional notions of rhythm and pulse.
[purgatorio] POPOPERA US TOUR US Premiere: Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Maryland, MD, September 24, 2009 In choreographers Emio Greco|PC’s collaboration with composer Michael Gordon, seven brilliant dancers oscillate along the seam between music and movement. Omnipresent during the performance are shiny black guitars which, when married with the dancers’ bodies, transform them into fragile flesh-and-blood soundboards. Based on the structure of Dante’s Divine Comedy, POPOPERA is a richly potent netherworld of transition, transformation and purification where dancers perform to the point of utter exhaustion and ecstasy. Co-commissioned by the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.
After performances in Italy, France, and the Netherlands the company is now coming to the US.
Pinball and Grace World Premiere: Groningen Schouwburg, the Netherlands, October 6, 2009 Pinball and Grace is a collaboration between dance group Club Guy and Roni, composer Michael Gordon and Slagwerkgroep Den Haag (Percussion Group The Hague). The piece for 8 dancers and 6 musicians will be premiered on the 6th of October in the Groningen Schouwburg, followed by a Dutch and international tour.
Gotham at New World Symphony
Lincoln Theatre Miami Beach, Florida November 7, 2009 7:30PM [tickets here]
Michael Gordon and film maker Bill Morrison's 'film symphony' about New York City to be performed by Miami's outstanding New World Symphony.
