He is a 2004 winner of a Barlow Endowment commission, through which he will write a new work for Duo46, a Cyprus-based guitar and violin duo in residence at Eastern Mediterranean University. Fancywork--inspired by the late 19th c. American arts movement--will premiere as part of the Cortona Contemporary Music Festival, just outside Florence, Italy, on 16 July, 2006. Several US performances, during the 2006-07 concert season, will follow. 

His music has been featured on the Skylight Chamber Music Series in Milwaukee, subscription concerts with the Contemporary Music Consortium in Salt Lake City, the Music 98, 99 and 2000 Festivals in Cincinnati, the Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia and the Warebrook Festival in Vermont. In August of 1998, his chamber work Lines Written in Early Spring premiered at the Musique Autour des Vieilles Pierres Festival in Normandy, France; the Chicago-based CUBE Ensemble performed the work as part of the South Loop New Music Festival in March, 2003. His Impromptu for solo piano was performed at the Alfio Gigli Festival in Bologna, Italy in November, 2000, and included on the US tour performances of the Italian pianist Emanuele Arciuli in November, 2002. (Mr. Arciuli has commissioned a concerto from Mr. Gordon for the 2006 season.) The Riverside Symphony, resident orchestra at Columbia University, selected Mr. Gordon's Concerto in One Movement for Violin and Orchestra for performance and recording during its International New Music program, in May, 1999. His Mise en scene was selected by the Minnesota Orchestra for its Perfect Pitch program. The work was performed and recorded at Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis, in October, 1999. One of Mr. Gordon’s works--An imagined Poussin Triptych, for string orchestra-- was selected for inclusion in Music at the Anthology’s Fourth Annual Festival of Music, in May, 2003.

Commissions have included new works for the Milwaukee Symphony--which gave the world premiere of his Millenniumiana on 31 December 1999, Music Director Andreas Delfs conducting--and the Minneapolis-based vocal ensemble Dare to Breathe, which premiered Mr. Gordon's, Collage a Trois Trobar, at the Weisman Art Gallery in Minneapolis in November, 1999. The work has since received a highly acclaimed Chicago premiere. Cellist Elizabeth Morrow commissioned Lorca Musica per cello solo, and has performed it extensively in recital across the United States. Fanfare magazine called the work, "the absolute standout . . . remarkable." Lorca has been recorded on Ms. Morrow's debut CD, Soliloquy, and was featured during the World Cello Congress in June, 2000. Mr. Gordon was selected as a Fellow to the 2000 Composers Conference at Wellesley College, where, during his residency, a new chamber work, Sonata da chroma, was performed and recorded.

Ensemble Aleph selected Gordon’s chamber work, Caravaggio, for inclusion in the First International Composers Forum, held in Cannes, France, 15-25 August, 2000. (Mr. Gordon was the only American composer selected.) Following the ten day residency and performances at the La Napoule Arts Foundation, Caravaggio received a formal premiere at the Theatre Dunois in Paris, on a series of five concerts, in October, 2000. Ensemble Aleph also toured this work through Greece, Italy and the United Kingdom in 2001. Cool RED Cool, a new work for chamber sextet, received the Andy Warhol Social Observer Prize, awarded in connection with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The PAFA presented the world premiere of this new work in Philadelphia on 13 September, 2000. (The Philadelphia Inquirer called the work "a stunner . . . ")

During the 2006-07 concert season, Ensemble Aleph and the Contemporary Music Forum of Washington, DC will collaborate on a series of concerts featuring Mr. Gordon’s works. The two ensembles will join forces for performances of Fallen Eve, after the poetry of Ted Hughes, in concerts scheduled for Paris, Washington and Philadelphia in March, 2007.

The Channel Islands Ballet opened their 2002-03 season with a revival of Gordon’s three act ballet after the Garcìa Lorca play, The House of Bernarda Alba. Interiors of a Courtyard, commissioned for the German guitar Duo Ahlert & Schwab and published by Wolfhead Music in August, 2005, premiered at the La Guitarra Festival in California in September, 2003; additional performances, including a national radio broadcast on WFMT in Chicago and a concert at Sundin Music Hall in Minneapolis, followed. La tristesse durera toujours, commissioned by Ensemble Aleph, premiered in connection with joint composer/ensemble residencies at the University of Pittsburgh and Brigham Young University in March, 2004. The European premiere, as part of Ensemble Aleph's subscription season, took place at the Theatre Dunois in Paris in May, 2004. L’Ensemble Portique gave a series of premiere performances of wrecked angels (flute, cello and guitar), commissioned for their inaugural season, in May, 2003; the work was featured on the Warebrook Contemporary Music Festival in Vermont, in July, 2004. A new work commissioned for UK-based ensemble Passacaglia, Stanza della Segnatura (after the Raphael frescoes in the Vatican), featured on a 2004 US tour; the UK premiere is planned for Wigmore Hall, London, dates to be determined. (The work will be published in January, 2006 by the UK-based Peacock Press.) A concert devoted to Mr. Gordon’s works was a part of the NorthRiver Music Series at the Greenwich House in New York City, on 11 March, 2004.

 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.

Note: For publicity purposes, please use the above text as written, available as a PDF file.  If space is limited,  please refer to the Condensed Program Biography.