Geoffrey Gordon Composer

Geoffrey Gordon Composer

By Geoffrey GordonMusic
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Geoffrey Gordon Composer episodes

  • FATHOMS IV: The Isle Is Full of Noises
    This is the studio recording of Geoffrey Gordon's FATHOMS, Five Impressions of Shakespeare's The Tempest (with Prelude), for cello and piano, featuring cellist Toke Moldrup and pianist Steven Beck, which premiered at Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York City, 17 December 2015.
    "The engaging and colorful 'Fathoms' links to the past with unabashedly programmatic, extroverted storytelling. Using a range of extended techniques and unusual textures, Mr. Gordon vividly sketches characters and scenes from 'The Tempest.' Caliban’s gruffness, Ariel’s quicksilver curiosity, the glowing romance between Ferdinand and Miranda all came alive in Mr. Moldrup and Mr. Beck’s intense playing. The final movement imagines Prospero drowning his book, with Mr. Moldrup gradually tuning the bottom string of his cello downward, creating the unnerving sensation of something sinking, slowly, to ever darker depths."
    The New York Times: 18 December 2015
    6 min
  • FATHOMS III: Caliban (and Sycorax)
    This is the studio recording of Geoffrey Gordon's FATHOMS, Five Impressions of Shakespeare's The Tempest (with Prelude), for cello and piano, featuring cellist Toke Moldrup and pianist Steven Beck, which premiered at Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York City, 17 December 2015.
    "The engaging and colorful 'Fathoms' links to the past with unabashedly programmatic, extroverted storytelling. Using a range of extended techniques and unusual textures, Mr. Gordon vividly sketches characters and scenes from 'The Tempest.' Caliban’s gruffness, Ariel’s quicksilver curiosity, the glowing romance between Ferdinand and Miranda all came alive in Mr. Moldrup and Mr. Beck’s intense playing. The final movement imagines Prospero drowning his book, with Mr. Moldrup gradually tuning the bottom string of his cello downward, creating the unnerving sensation of something sinking, slowly, to ever darker depths."
    The New York Times: 18 December 2015
    5 min
  • FATHOMS I: Ferdinanda and Miranda
    This is the studio recording of Geoffrey Gordon's FATHOMS, Five Impressions of Shakespeare's The Tempest (with Prelude), for cello and piano, featuring cellist Toke Moldrup and pianist Steven Beck, which premiered at Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York City, 17 December 2015.
    "The engaging and colorful 'Fathoms' links to the past with unabashedly programmatic, extroverted storytelling. Using a range of extended techniques and unusual textures, Mr. Gordon vividly sketches characters and scenes from 'The Tempest.' Caliban’s gruffness, Ariel’s quicksilver curiosity, the glowing romance between Ferdinand and Miranda all came alive in Mr. Moldrup and Mr. Beck’s intense playing. The final movement imagines Prospero drowning his book, with Mr. Moldrup gradually tuning the bottom string of his cello downward, creating the unnerving sensation of something sinking, slowly, to ever darker depths."
    The New York Times: 18 December 2015
    6 min
  • FATHOMS: Prelude and Storm
    This is the studio recording of Geoffrey Gordon's FATHOMS, Five Impressions of Shakespeare's The Tempest (with Prelude), for cello and piano, featuring cellist Toke Moldrup and pianist Steven Beck, which premiered at Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York City, 17 December 2015.
    "The engaging and colorful 'Fathoms' links to the past with unabashedly programmatic, extroverted storytelling. Using a range of extended techniques and unusual textures, Mr. Gordon vividly sketches characters and scenes from 'The Tempest.' Caliban’s gruffness, Ariel’s quicksilver curiosity, the glowing romance between Ferdinand and Miranda all came alive in Mr. Moldrup and Mr. Beck’s intense playing. The final movement imagines Prospero drowning his book, with Mr. Moldrup gradually tuning the bottom string of his cello downward, creating the unnerving sensation of something sinking, slowly, to ever darker depths."
    The New York Times: 18 December 2015
    7 min
  • FATHOMS II: Ariel And All His Quality
    This is the studio recording of Geoffrey Gordon's FATHOMS, Five Impressions of Shakespeare's The Tempest (with Prelude), for cello and piano, featuring cellist Toke Moldrup and pianist Steven Beck, which premiered at Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York City, 17 December 2015.
    "The engaging and colorful 'Fathoms' links to the past with unabashedly programmatic, extroverted storytelling. Using a range of extended techniques and unusual textures, Mr. Gordon vividly sketches characters and scenes from 'The Tempest.' Caliban’s gruffness, Ariel’s quicksilver curiosity, the glowing romance between Ferdinand and Miranda all came alive in Mr. Moldrup and Mr. Beck’s intense playing. The final movement imagines Prospero drowning his book, with Mr. Moldrup gradually tuning the bottom string of his cello downward, creating the unnerving sensation of something sinking, slowly, to ever darker depths."
    The New York Times: 18 December 2015
    6 min
  • FATHOMS V: Prospero Drowns His Book
    This is the studio recording of Geoffrey Gordon's FATHOMS, Five Impressions of Shakespeare's The Tempest (with Prelude), for cello and piano, featuring cellist Toke Moldrup and pianist Steven Beck, which premiered at Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, New York City, 17 December 2015.
    "The engaging and colorful 'Fathoms' links to the past with unabashedly programmatic, extroverted storytelling. Using a range of extended techniques and unusual textures, Mr. Gordon vividly sketches characters and scenes from 'The Tempest.' Caliban’s gruffness, Ariel’s quicksilver curiosity, the glowing romance between Ferdinand and Miranda all came alive in Mr. Moldrup and Mr. Beck’s intense playing. The final movement imagines Prospero drowning his book, with Mr. Moldrup gradually tuning the bottom string of his cello downward, creating the unnerving sensation of something sinking, slowly, to ever darker depths."
    The New York Times: 18 December 2015
    7 min
  • GORDON - Concerto for Cello and Orchestra (studio)
    This is the studio recording of composer Geoffrey Gordon's Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, after the Thomas Mann novel, Doktor Faustus, featuring cellist Toke Moldrup, conductor Lan Shui, and the Copenhagen Philharmonic (which commissioned the work in 2014).
    25 min
  • GORDON - THORN (for violin, horn and piano)
    Horn soloist Ben Goldscheider premieres composer Geoffrey Gordon's new chamber work, THORN, at Conway Hall, London, in a performance from 3 February 2019. Callum Smart (violin) and Richard Uttley (piano), of the Ashwell Trio, are also featured.
    This work is inspired, in part, by a relic said to be a thorn from Jesus's crown, kept at Stonyhurst College, in Clitheroe, Lancashire, for the last 200 years. The thorn, enshrined in a glass case, has Mary Queen of Scots' pearls entwined around it. The Crown of Thorns is said to have been seized from Constantinople, the imperial capital of the Roman Empire, in the Fourth Crusade - around AD 1200 - and was later sold to King Louis IX of France while he was in Venice. King Louis kept the religious relic in the specially-built Saint Chapel and thorns were broken off from the crown and given to people who married into the family as gifts. The thorn at Stonyhurst College - a 400-year-old Jesuit boarding school - was said to have been given to Mary Queen of Scots when she married into the French royal family. Mary then took it with her to Holyrood, in Edinburgh, and following her execution in 1587, it was passed from her loyal servant, Thomas Percy, to his daughter, Elizabeth Woodruff, who then gave it to her confessor - a Jesuit priest - in 1600. The Jesuits brought it with them to the college and it has been kept there ever since. In deference to the date of the thorn arriving at Stonyhurst, this work quotes, Why art thou so heavy, o my soul? of 17th c. English composer, Orlando Gibbons (1583 – 1625).
    This work was originally funded by the Britten Sinfonia.
    16 min
  • Saint Blue (double concerto for trumpet, piano and strings after Kandinsky)
    This is the studio recording, on the Signum label, of Geoffrey Gordon's double concerto, Saint Blue, commissioned for the English String Orchestra and soloists Simon Desbruslais and Clare Hammond, through funds provided by Arts Council England. Inspired by the works of Russian visual artist and visionary, Wassily Kandinsky, Saint Blue (scored for trumpet, piano and strings) is divided into two contrasting sections, with the second essentially embedded in the first—a kind of sonic exploration of the sacred and profane—in a fairly straight-forward A-B-A design. The first section is a reaction to Kandinsky’s 1911 All Saints I (part of the Stadtische Galerie’s permanent collection in Munich), and features the soloists and full string orchestra in a shared expression of this colorful masterpiece. The contrasting B section draws the orchestra’s principal double bass into a trio with the trumpet and piano soloists, creating a kind of extended, jazz-infused cadenza, after Kandinsky’s In Blue (1925; part of the Kunstsammlung Museum’s collection in Dusseldorf). An animated return to the tutti string orchestra and some (evolved) thematic music from All Saints I, concludes Saint Blue.
    "Geoffrey Gordon’s Saint Blue, inspired by two Kandinsky paintings ('All Saints 1' and 'In Blue', well worth a web search), is by far the best work on this engaging disc; a taut and exhilarating single movement concerto, wonderfully played by soloists Simon Desbruslais and Clare Hammond."
    –Chris Achenbach
    Classical Ear (UK): 30 April 2018
    "Geoffrey Gordon's Saint Blue is inspired by two Kandinsky paintings, All Saints I and In Blue and constructed as 'a sonic exploration of the sacred and profane,' with the trumpet deployed first as an instrument of heavenly summons, then as the bluesy soul of jazz in this complex, richly-satisfying work."
    -Kate Wakeling
    BBC Music Magazine: January 2018
    10 min
  • GORDON - Gotham News (for string orchestra)
    This is a live performance of Geoffrey Gordon's new work for string orchestra, Gotham News, after the painting of the same name by Dutch artist Willem de Kooning (1955), with the Radom Chamber Orchestra and conductor Szymon Morus, Krzysztof Penderecki Concert Hall, Radom, Poland - 29 November 2019.
    Gotham News was commissioned by the Merz Foundation as part of the Mario Merz Prize in Music Composition awarded to Mr. Gordon in 2017, and was premiered in Sicily, with the WADI Ensemble and conductor Willy Merz, in a performance at the Chiesa di Santa Caterina, in Bellini Plaza, Palermo, Italy, on 13 October 2018.
    14 min

About Geoffrey Gordon Composer

From the publisher's feed

US/UK composer Geoffrey Gordon’s contributions to the contemporary music repertoire have been and continue to be exceptional. Intense and luxuriant harmony, passionate melody and superb handling of instrumentation and sonic textures define his music. His works include orchestral, chamber and vocal works, recognised and performed by the world's top musicians and ensembles. His music has been called "darkly seductive" (The New York Times), "complex, richly-satisfying " (BBC Music Magazine), “stunning” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “iridescent and glowing” (Chicago Tribune), “taut and exhilarating” (Classical Ear), “haunting” (Strings Magazine), "gripping" (Bachtrack), "fierce and uncompromising" (MusicWeb International) and “magnificent” (Fanfare). The Philharmonia identifies “his infectious style" and “an ear for melody”; the New York Times his “zest for sonic experimentation”.