RICKY IAN GORDON
COMPOSER
BIOGRAPHY
Long Island native Ricky Ian Gordon studied piano, composition, and acting at Carnegie Mellon University before settling 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 recorded by such internationally renowned singers as Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, Nathan Gunn, Judy Collins, Kelli O’Hara, Audra McDonald, Kristin Chenoweth, Nicole Cabell, the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Frederica von Stade, Nadine Sierra, Andrea Marcovicci, Harolyn Blackwell, and Betty Buckley, among many others.
Of Mr. Gordon’s oeuvre, Stephen Holden, wrote in The New York Times, “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.”
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Upcoming commissions include This House, a new opera for Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’ 50th anniversary season in 2025 with librettists Lynn Nottage and Ruby Gerber. His Huit Chansons de Fleurs, written for soprano Erin Morley, will be released on a new Orchid Classic recording and premiere at the Kennedy Center on May 13, 2024, and his Marvin Gaye Songs commissioned by the Tucson Song Festival for baritone Justin Austin, using poems by Vievee Francis, recently premiered at Carnegie Hall on March 5, 2024.
Mr. Gordon’s opera The Grapes of Wrath recently returned to Carnegie Hall on April 17, 2024, presented by MasterVoices, led by Ted Sperling and featuring Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Seen and Heard International called the newest edition of the piece “...slick, vibrant and emotionally wrenching…”, while Arts Journal called it “...one of the great New York events of the season…” and New York Stage Review said, “If you’re left dryeyed, you are perhaps utterly devoid of empathy.” Other recent productions of his operas include The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (New York City Opera/National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, lib. Michael Korie); Intimate Apparel (Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater, lib. Lynn Nottage); Ellen West (Beth Morrison Projects, Opera Saratoga, lib. Frank Bidart); The House Without a Christmas Tree (Houston Grand Opera); 27 (Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Pittsburgh Opera, Opera Montreal, and Opera Montana, lib. Royce Vavrek); Morning Star (Cincinnati Opera, OnSite Opera, lib. William Hoffman); A Coffin in Egypt (Houston Grand Opera, Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, Chicago Opera Theater, Opera Philadelphia, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, lib. Leonard Foglia); Rappahannock County (Virginia Opera, lib. Mark Campbell); Green Sneakers (Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, Bay Chamber Festival, Opera Birmingham, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, lib. Ricky Ian Gordon); The Grapes of Wrath (Minnesota Opera, Utah Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Anchorage Opera, Disney Hall, and Carnegie Hall, lib. Michael Korie); The Tibetan Book of The Dead (Houston Grand Opera, Eastman School of Music, and Opera Grand Rapids, lib. Jean Claude Van Itallie); and Orpheus and Euridice (Lincoln Center (OBIE Award), Pittsburgh Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Minnesota Dance Theater, and Vermont Opera Project, lib. Ricky Ian Gordon). His musicals include Sycamore Trees (Signature Theatre, playwright Nina Mankin, Helen Hayes Award); My Life with Albertine (Playwrights Horizons, playwright Richard Nelson, AT&T Award, Gilman and Gonzalez-Falla Music Theater Foundation Award); and Dream True (Vineyard Theatre, playwright Tina Landau, Richard Rodgers Award).
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, University of Michigan, Point Park (McGinnis Distinguished Lecturer), Texas Lutheran University, Eastman School of Music, Florida State University, Texas Christian University, and San Francisco Conservatory. He has been the featured Composer-in-Residence at various festivals including Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, the Van Cliburn Foundation, Voices of Change, Santa Fe Song Festival, Songfest at Pepperdine University, Chautauqua, Aspen Music Festival, and Ravinia. In 2018, he was the commencement speaker at the University of Michigan.
Other honors include the 2003 Alumni Merit Award for exceptional achievement and leadership from Carnegie Mellon University, a Shen Family Foundation Award, the Stephen Sondheim 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.
Mr. Gordon’s works are published by Presser Music, Carl Fischer Music, Williamson Music, and Hal Leonard and are available everywhere; they are also widely recorded on various labels. His memoir Seeing Through: A Chronicle of Sex, Drugs, and Opera will be released on July 23, 2024 and is available for preorder.
Current as of May 9, 2024
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
"Ricky Ian Gordon is a Mensch..." – Opera Today
Seeing Through: A Chronicle of Sex, Drugs, and Opera – "Ricky Ian Gordon is a Mensch. His Seeing Through: A Chronicle of Sex, Drugs, and Opera...is already a highly satisfying, complicated, intriguing, vexing, informative voyage, that caroms around the world of classical music and theatre VIP relationships, bumping heads, bruising egos, and bonding in creative fruition."
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"... Gordon clearly has an original attitude...” – Gramophone
Bright-Eyed Joy – “Ricky Ian Gordon is one of the New Yorkbased composers who seem to be creating a new genre‚ halfway between American art song and show tunes. The booklet that comes with this CD‚ although it prints the texts of the songs and has an affectionate note about the composer from producer Tommy Krasker‚ gives no information about the singers. Dawn Upshaw and Audra McDonald are both well known for their ability to encompass musical theatre and concertplatform styles‚ but it’s a surprise to find the composer Adam Guettel as a vocalist here. Gordon’s music has echoes of Sondheim‚ Copland and a generous dash of the blues. The emphasis is on a slightly jokey‚ halfsad‚ halfhappy mood. His settings here focus on poetry by Langston Hughes‚ Edna St Vincent Millay and Dorothy Parker. Hughes’ Poor Girl’s Ruination is paired with The Dream Keeper to make a pointed scena that Audra McDonald sings with expressive melancholy. The male voices‚ Guettel‚ Darius de Haas and Chris Pedro Trakas all veer towards crooning‚ whereas Theresa McCarthy has a pure soprano that is well displayed in Afternoon on a Hill. There are a couple of duets‚ Love Song for Lucinda‚ with a nice ragtime influence‚ and Resumé/Wail/Frustration‚ three typically cynical Dorothy Parker verses‚ sung by Judy Blazer and Trakas‚ which is the most overtly Broadway selection‚ whereas Song for a Dark Girl comes nearest to opera. This‚ like Dream Variations and Daybreak in Alabama‚ comes from Audra McDonald’s recital Way Back to Paradise (Nonesuch‚ 7/99). New Moon and Joy are vocal quartets to verses by Hughes that have that quality of spare emotion that made him one of the most admired poets of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. The mood expressed in them is mostly optimistic‚ as Joy‚ the song from which theCD gets its title‚ implies. Gordon clearly has an original attitude‚ and the accompaniments, both piano solo and instrumental‚ are full of attractive detail.”
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“Gordon’s music palpably burns with sorrow and frustration...” – Journal of Singing
Souvenir – “The first song we hear from Ricky Ian Gordon is “Souvenir,” an exquisite setting of a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Gordon’s poetic first love. Every bit as poignant is “The Good Death,” an excerpt from the theatrical song cycle Rappahannock County, in which a seriously ill Civil War soldier laments the likelihood that his will not be a heroic death on the battlefield, but rather a pointless death in a hospital bed due to typhus. Gordon’s music palpably burns with sorrow and frustration, and Powell’s performance of it is nothing less than searing. The same can be said for “Father’s Song,” from a largely autobiographical musical titled Sycamore Trees. In this heartbreaking song, a father mourns the death of one of his daughters from a drug overdose. Gordon takes us on a nearly unbearable journey into the most acute kind of sorrow and regret, but it is Powell’s openhearted singing that makes such a journey possible.”
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"...He illustrates with skill, grace and flair...." – The New York Times
The Grapes of Wrath – "Mr. Gordon’s music is received from elsewhere: from the simple singing of American balladry, the wide-open-spaces style of American symphonists, and the bounce of the Broadway and Hollywood musical. There are tinges of dissonance to accompany the opera’s uglier moments, but this music’s main intent is to oblige. If Alban Berg or Messiaen had been painters, they would be regarded as artists. Mr. Gordon is more an illustrator. He illustrates with skill, grace and flair. Mr. Korie’s literate, often clever libretto is a big help. Together the two men gently push the narrative from episode to episode."