Michael Gordon News

'I know you want everything to be clear and simple' is the last chorus of the fabulous chamber opera, 'Acquanetta', about the voluptuous, B-movie actress who had a sunstorm of celebrity in the 1940s. Indeed, the narrative structure 'Acquanetta' is rather uncomplicated based on a single scene in the cult classic 'Captive Wild Women' where Acquanetta played a wild, ravishing creature surgically transmuted from an ape by a mad doctor. But 'Acquanetta''s themes are anything but simple. By fusing the essentials of cinema, opera and drama to stunning effect, 'Acquanetta' renders a mesmerizing, multi-layered contemplation of illusion and identity. Directed by Daniel Fish, who re-interpreted 'Oklahoma' (which started at Bard), 'Acquanetta' is both an amazing, technical tour-de-force and thrilling, theatrical experience.

ACQUANETTA, which just opened at Bard's SummerScape, was the piece that opened 2018's edition of PROTOTYPE festival in New York. Musically and dramatically, written by Michael Gordon, composer (of 'Bang on a Can' fame), Deborah Artman, librettist (ditto), the piece is very much in a class of its own.

Grammy-winning new-music choir, The Crossing, releases its latest album, THE ARC IN THE SKY, today, Friday, July 12, 2019, on Navona Records. Kile Smith's 2018 setting of journal entries and poems by Robert Lax (1915–2000), THE ARC IN THE SKY is an epic, hour-long tour de force of thought and feeling that traverses topics ranging from Louis Armstrong to Jack Kerouac, and from Jerusalem to the shores of the island of Patmos. THE ARC IN THE SKY marks Smith's sixth commission from The Crossing, which has also recorded his Where Flames a Word and Vespers

On Friday, August 23, 2019 at 8pm, the American Composers Forum partners with GRAMMY-winning vocal project Roomful of Teeth in world premieres by Mingjia Chen, Mary Kouyoumdjian, and Peter S. Shin atMASS MoCA.

Across the board, from masterpieces to movies, it's going to be a big, fun 201920 season for the Kansas City Symphony.

Jerwood DanceHouse, Ipswich announces 5 more celebratory events to mark its first 10 years starting from 29 August

Something old, something new…there's still plenty going on for fans of opera and classical vocal music in the Northeast now that summer is upon us. Here's a taste of what to look for.

The 2019 Bard SummerScape festival presents a pair of important new dance and theater works next month. On July 5-7, Evidence, A Dance Company and its founder and artistic director, Ronald K. Brown, make their festival debut with the world premiere of Grace and Mercy. A new SummerScape commission, this two-part program pairs Grace (live), a 20th-anniversary version of Brown's soulful masterpiece Grace, now danced entirely to live music performed by Peven Everett, Gordon Chambers, and others, with the world premiere of Mercy, Brown's new companion piece, which is set to a brand-new score written and performed live by ten-time Grammy-nominee Meshell Ndegeocello.

Peak Performances announces its 2019-2020 season, considering the vocabularies of the body, genre and form, artistic practices and legacies, cultures, and language itself-how they persevere, disappear, or shift over time with new influences and perspectives. This season, Peak Performances offers its state-of-the-art platform to artists who work with-and sometimes against-these established vocabularies in the creation of exhilarating new performance works and the reinvigoration of preexisting texts, compositions, and choreographies. All performances take place at the Alexander Kasser Theater (1 Normal Ave, Montclair, NJ 07043).

The summer season of the Young People's Chorus of New York City, under Artistic DirectorFounder Francisco J. Nuñez, opens with two New York City concerts before they move on to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic; Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee; and the Tennessee American Choral Directors Association (ACDA) in Murfreesboro, outside of Nashville.

The award-winning musical The Bully Problem has been the talk of Hollywood Fringe this June. Now, the world premiere work written and composed by Michael Gordon Shapiro and produced by New Musicals Inc. is officially a Pick of the Fringe!

Fresh off showcasing at the prestigious ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop, acclaimed composer Michael Gordon Shapiro's captivating, award-winning musical THE BULLY PROBLEM is thrilling Fringe audiences with its sweet, poignant, and action-packed musical about bullying, standing up for yourself…and robots. Performed by an ensemble of actors who know how to truly support each other and work together from moment-to-moment, there is no doubt in my mind the production will be one of the biggest Fringe hits this month.

The Bully Problem opens this Friday, June 14 , 2019 at the The Broadwater - Main Stage. In this award-winning musical from Michael Gordon Shapiro, impassioned nerds face a slew of school bullies head on, with the help of a mostly-functional android.

Doug Varone and Dancers in the shelter of the fold / epilogue is a transcendent and transfixing inquiry into public and private relationships to faith through seven vignettes that intermingled fluidly at BAM's Fisher from June 5-8th. The thirteen bodies in nearly continuous motion -- choreographed by Varone -- were so mesmerizing that the captivated viewers were on the edge of their seats during the entire performance. The evening was as sonically spellbinding as it was visually enchanting thanks to the complex, varied and at times otherworldly or ethereal sounds provided a diverse array of multiple compositions played by Bang on a Can All-Stars with PUBLIQuartet and Lesley Flanigan.

Bang on a Can and the Jewish Museum's 2019-2020 concert season, pairing innovative music with the Museum's exhibitions, begins on Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 7:30pm. The Young People's Chorus of New York City (YPC), founded and directed by Francisco J. Nuñez, perform a concert that will include songs and poems by Leonard Cohen and others, coinciding with the Jewish Museum's exhibition, Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything. Recognized throughout New York City and internationally as one of the leading and most diverse children's choirs, YPC is a longtime and frequent collaborator with Bang on a Can. The chorus has forged a unique presence in the city's music community both as a champion commissioner and performer of new works by today's leading composers and for its innovative vocal arrangements that consistently cross all musical borders.

This Thursday, June 6th, The Bully Problem will begin previews at the The Broadwater - Main Stage. Brilliant nerds take on a slew of bullies with the help of a mostly-functional android in this award-winning musical from Michael Shapiro.

On Friday, June 28, 2019, Navona Records releases EVOLUTIONARY SPIRITS, a new recording from Grammy-winning new-music choir, The Crossing, featuring works by six contemporary composers: Edie Hill, Gregory W. Brown, James Shrader, Bruce Babcock, Jonathan Sheffer, and Christopher J. Hoh. Exploring humanity in all its facets, EVOLUTIONARY SPIRITS grapples with aspects of life, both mortal and eternal, drawing texts from a variety of sources including songs of praise from the Biblical era, a reimagining of a Shakespearean sonnet, and contemporary poetry.

On the evening of May 13, Dramatists Guild Foundation and Morgan Stanley hosted An Evening of Philanthropy, Legacy, and Music at Morgan Stanley.

The 2019 Bard SummerScape festival takes a contemporary look at Hollywood's Golden Age in Acquanetta, a visual and musical tour-de-force inspired by the eponymous B-movie star with a mysterious past. Combining theater, opera, and film in a haunting meditation on identity, transformation, stereotypes, and typecasting from composer and Bang on a Can co-founder Michael Gordon and his longtime collaborator, librettist Deborah Artman, Acquanetta originally premiered at the PROTOTYPE Festival, where it was a New York Times and New York magazine "Critics' Pick" and one of the New York Classical Review's "Top Ten Performances of 2018."by Daniel Fish, whose previous SummerScape staging (a revelatory new take on Oklahoma!), scoring the visionary director a 2019 Tony nomination.