Ricky Ian Gordon was born on May 15, 1956 in Oceanside, NY and raised on Long Island. After studying composition at Carnegie Mellon University, he settled in New York City, where he quickly emerged as a leading writer of vocal music that spans art song, opera, and musical theater. Mr. Gordon's songs have been performed and or recorded by such internationally renowned singers as Renee Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, Audra MacDonald, Kristin Chenoweth, the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Frederica Von Stade, Andrea Marcovicci, Harolyn Blackwell, and Betty Buckley, among many others.
Recent productions of his work include:
2008: Green Sneakers, a theatrical song cycle for Baritone, String Quartet, and Empty Chair, with a libretto by the composer, premiered July 15th in Vail, Colorado, at the Alberto Vilar Performing Arts Center, when the composer was Composer-in-Residence at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival. Upon it's premiere, with baritone, Jesse Blumberg, and the Miami String Quartet, it was cited in Opera Today, in an article entitled "Gordon Creates Masterpiece With "Green Sneakers," "It is amazing that in this his first work for string quartet Gordon has perfected an idiom that goes to the edge of tonality to create a microcosm of pain and despair that has all the markings of a contemporary Gesamtkunstwerk. Indeed, at the premier, members of the Miami String Quartet were no longer mere strings, but humanized voices that formed a seamless dramatic unity with Blumberg... With the repetition of "Sleep Dear," the final words of Green Sneakers, one heard in Vail a distant echo of the "Ewig" that concludes Mahler's monumental Abschied. For this is a song of today's earth, a farewell lamentation that transcends death." It was subsequently done at Pittsburgh Opera in a festival of the composer's works, on a double bill with his Orpheus and Euridice. Robert Croan writing in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, called his article, "Superb Mini-Operas Convey Heartfelt Grief."
2007 & 2008: The Grapes of Wrath, a full-scale opera with libretto by Michael Korie, premiered at the Minnesota Opera in a production that then traveled first to Utah Opera, and then to Pittsburgh Opera. Musical America called the work, "The great American opera," and Los Angeles Times critic Mark Swed wrote that: "...the greatest glory of the opera is Gordon's ability to musically flesh out the entire 11-member Joad clan...Gordon's other great achievement is to merge Broadway and opera... greatly enhanced by his firm control over ensembles and his sheer love for the operatic voice." Alex Ross, writing in The New Yorker, wrote "Gordon, who first made his name in the theatre and as a composer of Broadway-style songs, fills his score with beautifully turned genre pieces, often harking back to American popular music of the twenties and thirties: Gershwinesque song-and-dance numbers, a few sweetly soaring love songs in the manner of Jerome Kern, banjo-twanging ballads, saxed-up jazz choruses, even a barbershop quartet. You couldn't ask for a more comfortably appointed evening of vintage musical Americana. Yet, with a slyness worthy of Weill, Gordon wields his hummable tunes to critical effect..." A Suite from the opera was premiered at Disney Hall in spring 2008 (May 18). The full opera, live from the Minnesota premiere, is now available on a 3 CD set with libretto liner notes on PS Classics. Carl Fischer will publish the Vocal Score as well as a Folio of Arias from the Opera.
2005: Orpheus and Euridice, an hour-long song cycle in two acts, premiered at Lincoln Center. Directed and choreographed by Doug Varone and performed by Elizabeth Futral, Soprano, Todd Palmer, Clarinet and Melvin Chen, Piano, it won an OBIE Award and is recorded on Ghostlight Records and published by Carl Fischer Music. It was given new productions at Long Beach Opera February of 2008, and Fort Worth Opera in July of 2008, and Long Leaf Opera in North Carolina reprised the Lincoln Center/Doug Varone production.
2003: My Life with Albertine, written with Richard Nelson and based on Proust's Remembrance of Things Past premiered at New York's Playwrights Horizons (recorded on PS Classics and published by Rodgers and Hammerstein/Williamson Music, AT&T Award).
2001: Bright Eyed Joy: The Music of Ricky Ian Gordon, was presented at Lincoln Center as part of the American Songbook Series. Stephen Holden, writing in the New York Times wrote of the work, "If the music of Ricky Ian Gordon had to be defined by a single quality, it would be the bursting effervescence in fusing songs that blithely blur the lines between art song and the high-end Broadway music of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim...It's caviar for a world gorging on pizza." "Bright Eyed Joy" is recorded on Nonesuch Records with vocalists including Audra McDonald, Dawn Upshaw, and Adam Guettel.
Other works include, Dream True, written with Tina Landau and premiered in 1999 at The Vineyard Theater (recorded on PS Classics, Richard Rodgers Award, Jonathan Larson Foundation Award), States Of Independence, (also with Ms. Landau, for The Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia (formerly The American Music Theater Festival) in 1992, and Only Heaven, based on the works of Langston Hughes and premiered in 1995 at Encompass Opera (recorded on PS Classics, and published by Rodgers and Hammerstein/Williamson Music). The Tibetan Book of the Dead, written with Jean Claude Van Itallie, premiered at the Houston Grand Opera in 1996 and, and Morning Star, written with William Hoffman which Mr. Gordon wrote for The Lyric Opera Of Chicago, where he was a composer in residence.
He is currently working on commissions for New York's Metropolitan Opera (Adele Hugo) with librettist Michael Korie, a co-commission for a new work about the Civil War with librettist Mark Campbell, for Virginia Opera and The Virginia Arts Festival, and a new opera for the 50th anniversary of the Minnesota Opera (Garden of the Finzi Continis) with librettist Michael Korie. Gordon is also writing new musicals for Playwrights Horizons and The Signature Theater in Arlington, Virginia (Sycamore Trees, for which the composer is also the lyricist and the book writer.)
His publications include four songbooks "A Horse With Wings," "Genius Child," "Only Heaven," and "Finding Home," all published by Rodgers and Hammerstein / Williamson Music and distributed by Hal Leonard. Hal Leonard also published two choral pieces, "Three By Langston," and "We Will Always Walk Together," Mr. Gordon's arrangement of the final song from "Dream True," which was premiered by Grant Gershon and the Los Angeles Master Chorale at Disney Hall. They also published the full Vocal Score of "My Life With Albertine."
With Carl Fischer Music, Mr. Gordon has published "Songs For Our Time," "Piano Pieces:The Piano Music of Ricky Ian Gordon," "Orpheus and Euridice," "Late Afternoon," a song cycle for Mezzo Soprano and Piano, "Prayer," a choral work for piano and chorus, which will premiere at Disney Hall in April, 2009, with Grant Gershon conducting, and "Too Few The Mornings Be," a cycle of eleven settings of Emily Dickinson poems, written for Renee Fleming. Carl Fischer will also publish "The Grapes Of Wrath," "Green Sneakers," and many more works to be announced.
As a teacher Mr. Gordon has taught both Master Classes and Composition Classes in Colleges and Universities throughout the country including Yale, NYU, Northwestern, Juilliard, Manhattan School of Music, Catholic, Bennington, Vassar, Carnegie-Mellon, Elon, Michigan State, U of Michigan, Point Park (McGinnis Distinguished Lecturer) and San Francisco Conservatory. He has been the featured Composer-in Residence at various festivals including The Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, Songfest at Pepperdine University, Chatauqua, Aspen Music Festival, and Ravinia.
Among his honors are the 2003 Alumni Merit Award for exceptional achievement and leadership from Carnegie-Mellon University, the Shen Family Foundation award, the Stephen Sondheim Award, The Gilman and Gonzalez-Falla Theater Foundation Award, The Constance Klinsky Award, and many awards from ASCAP, of which he is a member, The National Endowment of the Arts, and The American Music Center.
Recent productions of his work include:
2008: Green Sneakers, a theatrical song cycle for Baritone, String Quartet, and Empty Chair, with a libretto by the composer, premiered July 15th in Vail, Colorado, at the Alberto Vilar Performing Arts Center, when the composer was Composer-in-Residence at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival. Upon it's premiere, with baritone, Jesse Blumberg, and the Miami String Quartet, it was cited in Opera Today, in an article entitled "Gordon Creates Masterpiece With "Green Sneakers," "It is amazing that in this his first work for string quartet Gordon has perfected an idiom that goes to the edge of tonality to create a microcosm of pain and despair that has all the markings of a contemporary Gesamtkunstwerk. Indeed, at the premier, members of the Miami String Quartet were no longer mere strings, but humanized voices that formed a seamless dramatic unity with Blumberg... With the repetition of "Sleep Dear," the final words of Green Sneakers, one heard in Vail a distant echo of the "Ewig" that concludes Mahler's monumental Abschied. For this is a song of today's earth, a farewell lamentation that transcends death." It was subsequently done at Pittsburgh Opera in a festival of the composer's works, on a double bill with his Orpheus and Euridice. Robert Croan writing in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, called his article, "Superb Mini-Operas Convey Heartfelt Grief."
2007 & 2008: The Grapes of Wrath, a full-scale opera with libretto by Michael Korie, premiered at the Minnesota Opera in a production that then traveled first to Utah Opera, and then to Pittsburgh Opera. Musical America called the work, "The great American opera," and Los Angeles Times critic Mark Swed wrote that: "...the greatest glory of the opera is Gordon's ability to musically flesh out the entire 11-member Joad clan...Gordon's other great achievement is to merge Broadway and opera... greatly enhanced by his firm control over ensembles and his sheer love for the operatic voice." Alex Ross, writing in The New Yorker, wrote "Gordon, who first made his name in the theatre and as a composer of Broadway-style songs, fills his score with beautifully turned genre pieces, often harking back to American popular music of the twenties and thirties: Gershwinesque song-and-dance numbers, a few sweetly soaring love songs in the manner of Jerome Kern, banjo-twanging ballads, saxed-up jazz choruses, even a barbershop quartet. You couldn't ask for a more comfortably appointed evening of vintage musical Americana. Yet, with a slyness worthy of Weill, Gordon wields his hummable tunes to critical effect..." A Suite from the opera was premiered at Disney Hall in spring 2008 (May 18). The full opera, live from the Minnesota premiere, is now available on a 3 CD set with libretto liner notes on PS Classics. Carl Fischer will publish the Vocal Score as well as a Folio of Arias from the Opera.
2005: Orpheus and Euridice, an hour-long song cycle in two acts, premiered at Lincoln Center. Directed and choreographed by Doug Varone and performed by Elizabeth Futral, Soprano, Todd Palmer, Clarinet and Melvin Chen, Piano, it won an OBIE Award and is recorded on Ghostlight Records and published by Carl Fischer Music. It was given new productions at Long Beach Opera February of 2008, and Fort Worth Opera in July of 2008, and Long Leaf Opera in North Carolina reprised the Lincoln Center/Doug Varone production.
2003: My Life with Albertine, written with Richard Nelson and based on Proust's Remembrance of Things Past premiered at New York's Playwrights Horizons (recorded on PS Classics and published by Rodgers and Hammerstein/Williamson Music, AT&T Award).
2001: Bright Eyed Joy: The Music of Ricky Ian Gordon, was presented at Lincoln Center as part of the American Songbook Series. Stephen Holden, writing in the New York Times wrote of the work, "If the music of Ricky Ian Gordon had to be defined by a single quality, it would be the bursting effervescence in fusing songs that blithely blur the lines between art song and the high-end Broadway music of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim...It's caviar for a world gorging on pizza." "Bright Eyed Joy" is recorded on Nonesuch Records with vocalists including Audra McDonald, Dawn Upshaw, and Adam Guettel.
Other works include, Dream True, written with Tina Landau and premiered in 1999 at The Vineyard Theater (recorded on PS Classics, Richard Rodgers Award, Jonathan Larson Foundation Award), States Of Independence, (also with Ms. Landau, for The Prince Music Theater in Philadelphia (formerly The American Music Theater Festival) in 1992, and Only Heaven, based on the works of Langston Hughes and premiered in 1995 at Encompass Opera (recorded on PS Classics, and published by Rodgers and Hammerstein/Williamson Music). The Tibetan Book of the Dead, written with Jean Claude Van Itallie, premiered at the Houston Grand Opera in 1996 and, and Morning Star, written with William Hoffman which Mr. Gordon wrote for The Lyric Opera Of Chicago, where he was a composer in residence.
He is currently working on commissions for New York's Metropolitan Opera (Adele Hugo) with librettist Michael Korie, a co-commission for a new work about the Civil War with librettist Mark Campbell, for Virginia Opera and The Virginia Arts Festival, and a new opera for the 50th anniversary of the Minnesota Opera (Garden of the Finzi Continis) with librettist Michael Korie. Gordon is also writing new musicals for Playwrights Horizons and The Signature Theater in Arlington, Virginia (Sycamore Trees, for which the composer is also the lyricist and the book writer.)
His publications include four songbooks "A Horse With Wings," "Genius Child," "Only Heaven," and "Finding Home," all published by Rodgers and Hammerstein / Williamson Music and distributed by Hal Leonard. Hal Leonard also published two choral pieces, "Three By Langston," and "We Will Always Walk Together," Mr. Gordon's arrangement of the final song from "Dream True," which was premiered by Grant Gershon and the Los Angeles Master Chorale at Disney Hall. They also published the full Vocal Score of "My Life With Albertine."
With Carl Fischer Music, Mr. Gordon has published "Songs For Our Time," "Piano Pieces:The Piano Music of Ricky Ian Gordon," "Orpheus and Euridice," "Late Afternoon," a song cycle for Mezzo Soprano and Piano, "Prayer," a choral work for piano and chorus, which will premiere at Disney Hall in April, 2009, with Grant Gershon conducting, and "Too Few The Mornings Be," a cycle of eleven settings of Emily Dickinson poems, written for Renee Fleming. Carl Fischer will also publish "The Grapes Of Wrath," "Green Sneakers," and many more works to be announced.
As a teacher Mr. Gordon has taught both Master Classes and Composition Classes in Colleges and Universities throughout the country including Yale, NYU, Northwestern, Juilliard, Manhattan School of Music, Catholic, Bennington, Vassar, Carnegie-Mellon, Elon, Michigan State, U of Michigan, Point Park (McGinnis Distinguished Lecturer) and San Francisco Conservatory. He has been the featured Composer-in Residence at various festivals including The Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, Songfest at Pepperdine University, Chatauqua, Aspen Music Festival, and Ravinia.
Among his honors are the 2003 Alumni Merit Award for exceptional achievement and leadership from Carnegie-Mellon University, the Shen Family Foundation award, the Stephen Sondheim Award, The Gilman and Gonzalez-Falla Theater Foundation Award, The Constance Klinsky Award, and many awards from ASCAP, of which he is a member, The National Endowment of the Arts, and The American Music Center.