works

What to Wear (2005) 65'

Text by Richard Foreman

2S, A, T, small female chorus
2kbd, perc, egtr, 2vn, db, drums [all instruments and voices amplified]

The Center for New Performance at CalArts and the Ontological-Hysteric Theater with funds provided by the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. What to Wear is also a Meet the Composer Commissioning Music/USA commission and was produced with the additional support of the Shubert Foundation.

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works

Road Trip (2017) 60'

music by Michael Gordon, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe

cl, pno, perc, egtr, vc, db

Road Trip was commissioned by BAM for the 2017 Next Wave Festival and by Stephen A. Block, Robert Braun & Joan Friedman, Leslie Lassiter, Raulee Marcus, New Music USA, Maria & Robert A. Skirnick, Jane and Richard Stewart, with additional support from Jerry Eberhardt and Phil Hettema.

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writing

What If I Like Your Politics but Don’t Like Your Art?

March 13, 2007

(…) One question I’ve asked in recent years is, If I don’t like your politics can I still like your art? Or put a simpler way, would you want a fantastic painting hanging on your wall that was made by a Nazi? It may sound like a bizarre question, but anyone with Carl Orff, Richard Strauss or Herbert von Karajan CDs in their collection should give it some thought. The throngs lined up around the block to see Karajan conduct the Berlin Philharmonic, as many New Yorkers did on repeated occasions, should have asked themselves this…

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Biography

Michael Gordon’s music merges subtle rhythmic invention with incredible power embodying, in the words of  The New Yorker‘s Alex Ross, “the fury of punk rock, the nervous brilliance of free jazz and the intransigence of classical modernism.”

Over the past 30 years, Gordon has produced a strikingly diverse body of work, ranging from large-scale pieces for high-energy ensembles to major orchestral commissions to works conceived specifically for the recording studio…

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