Saturday 21 October 2017, 7.30pm
Peter Gordon is a composer, saxophonist, arranger, producer and educator. He was born in New York City and spent his childhood in Virginia and Munich, Germany, moving to LA when he was 17. After attending UC San Diego and Mills College, Gordon moved to New York in 1975, where his Love of Life Orchestra first gained attention at downtown venues such as the Kitchen, CBGB, Max’s Kansas City, and the Mudd Club. Gordon produced recordings for LOLO, as well as Robert Ashley, Arthur Russell, Dinosaur L, Rhys Chatham, Laurie Anderson, Jill Kroesen, David Van Tieghem, and “Blue” Gene Tyranny. He was music producer for Robert Ashley’s video opera Perfect Lives, as well as the recent Spanish-language version, Vidas Perfectas, which was presented at Café Oto in 2012.)
Gordon has an ongoing collaboration creating live video-music performances with video artist Kit Fitzgerald, and he has composed four operas. A composer of scores of scores for theater, dance, film and video projects, he has been recognized with both an Obie Award and a Bessie Award. His music for film and television include Joe Versus the Volcano and ABC-TV’s Desperate Housewives, and the New York Philharmonic performed his orchestrations for Michael Tilson Thomas’ Thomashefsky Project. Gordon’s work with Lawrence Weiner include the films Altered to Suit and Plowman’s Lunch, the single Deutsche Angst (Crepescule 1979), and the opera The Society Architect Ponders the Golden Gate Bridge (Berlin/Bonn 2000).
A friend and frequent collaborator of the late Arthur Russell, Gordon has recently been touring Arthur Russell’s INSTRUMENTALS, directed by Peter Gordon in the US, Europe and Australia. Gordon’s recordings include Star Jaws (Lovely Music 1978), Extended Niceties (Lust/Unlust 1979), Geneva (Lust/Unlust 1980), Casino (Italian Records 1982), Innocent (CBS Masterworks 1985), Brooklyn (CBS Masterworks1986), Leningrad Xpress (Newtone 1992), Love of Life Orchestra: Quartet (Newtone 1995), The Yellow Box, w/David Cunningham (Piano Records 1995), Love of Life Orchestra (DFA 2010), Beachcombing w/Factory Floor (Optimo 2012), and Symphony 5 (Foom 2015). His album with Tim Burgess, Same Language, Different Worlds was released on Ogenesis Records this September. Gordon is Professor of Music at Bloomfield College, where he coordinates the music technology program.
