Geoffrey Gordon, classical music composer

Geoffrey Gordon image

Geoffrey Gordon

Biography

Geoffrey Gordon's list of works includes orchestral and chamber music--vocal and instrumental--as well as scores for theater, film and dance. His music has been called "brilliant" (Philadelphia Inquirer), "stunning" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), "wonderfully idiomatic" (Salt Lake Tribune), "haunting" (Strings Magazine) and "remarkable" (Fanfare). Chicago Tribune music critic John von Rhein called Mr. Gordon's lux solis aeterna, premiered in January of this year by the new music ensemble Fulcrum Point, "a cosmic beauty … of acutely crafted music."

A 2009 winner of the Aaron Copland Award, Mr. Gordon will be a composer-in-residence at the Aaron Copland House beginning in January, 2009. His work has been funded by the Barlow Endowment, the National Endowment for the Arts, the United Performing Arts Fund, the American Composers Forum, Meet the Composer, the MacArthur Foundation, the American Music Center, the Abelson Foundation, the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and the Bush Foundation. He has been in residence at the La Napoule Arts Foundation in Cannes, and at the historic Cliff Dweller Club in Chicago. He has been nominated for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center's Elise Stoeger Prize, which honors achievement in chamber music composition; in 2003, he received the WI State Fellowship in Music Composition. He has received academic fellowship support from the University of Wisconsin, Boston University, New York University and the Guildhall in London.

During the past year, Mr. Gordon's works were performed more than fifty times on three continents. In 2009, he will have two new works premiere as part of a commission project through Meet the Composer, including a new orchestral work for Boston Modern Orchestra Project and a new chamber work for the Parker String Quartet, co-commissioned by the Concert Artists Guild, which will premiere in New York, at Symphony Space, in May. Also in 2009, he will have premieres in Athens, Glasgow, London, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Santiago and Buenos Aires.

He is the inaugural winner of the Katherine A. Abelson Fund of the Lester S. Abelson Foundation Prize, funding a new work for mezzo soprano and mixed chamber ensemble. Fallen Eve, a setting of five texts by the poet Ted Hughes, was the centerpiece of a major French-American music festival in Paris in May, 2007, with reciprocal performances in Washington, DC, in April, 2008. He is a 2004 winner of a Barlow Endowment commission, through which he composed a new work for Duo46. Fancywork premiered as part of the Cortona Contemporary Music Festival, outside Florence, Italy, on 17 July 2006. A series of US performances, including the US premiere at Sundin Hall in Minneapolis in September, 2006, followed. Dou46 will record the work in 2010. He is a 2004 recipient of an American Composers Forum (JCCP) commission, funding a new work for Brazilian recorder virtuoso Clea Galhano and harpsichordist Vivian Montgomery. Echoes of Ferrara premiered in Boston and Minneapolis in March, 2006. Also in 2004, A Canticle in Shards, commissioned by the State of Connecticut, premiered in Hartford. A sequel to this work, A Canticle in Shards Study #2, featured on the 10th London New Wind Festival, in November, 2007.

In March, 2004, Mr. Gordon's works were featured as part of a solo concert on the esteemed North River Music Series at the Greenwich House in New York City. In March, 2001, the Riverside Symphony, in residence at Columbia University, gave the world premiere performances of a new work commissioned for string orchestra, the Monteverdi-inspired, An Imagined Poussin Triptych. This work was also selected for the 2003 Music at the Anthology (MATA) Festival. Cool RED Cool, a jazz-tinged chamber work for seven players, won the 2000 Andy Warhol Social Observer Prize, receiving world premiere performances at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In that same year, Mr. Gordon received a Fellowship to the highly regarded Composers Conference at Wellesley College, where his chamber work, Sonata da Chroma, was performed and recorded. His large-scale orchestral work Mis en Scene was selected for the Minnesota Orchestra's prestigious Perfect Pitch program. Later that year, the Milwaukee Symphony commissioned Milleniumianna to celebrate the new century, giving the world premiere at midnight on 31 December 1999.

He has been featured on the cover of M Magazine, and his work has been broadcast on WFMT in Chicago and WNYC in New York. Mr. Gordon has also served as an ASCAP representative in Washington, lobbying Congress on behalf of copyright protection and composers' rights. His work has been published by Wolfhead Music, Peacock Press and the Oregon Literary Review. His work has been recorded on the Centaur label.


Composer Title Date Action
Geoffrey Gordon Shock Diamonds 07/22/2009 Play Add to playlist