Carl Fischer Music Publishing

Ricky Ian Gordon was born on May 15, 1956 in Oceanside, NY and raised on Long Island. In love with poetry and fascinated, from an early age, by all forms of Opera and Music Theater, he attended Carnegie Mellon University as a piano major, but soon realized that his true vocation was as a composer. After college he settled in New York City and quickly emerged as one of the most successful writers of a kind of vocal music that straddles the world of theater and art song.

His unusual ability to find the musical core of a poem or lyric and express that essence in an appropriate musical style, has given his songs great appeal to singers of all styles and persuasions. 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, Andrea Marcovici, Harolyn Blackwell, Betty Buckley, Margaret Lattimore, Stephanie Novacek and Mary Philips, among many others.

His accomplishments in musical theater are also very notable, with shows such as My Life with Albertine, Dream True, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Only Heaven and Morning Star having been successfully performed.

On March 13, Mr. Gordon was presented at Lincoln Center as part of the American Songbook Series in a concert devoted to his music entitled “Bright Eyed Joy: The Music of Ricky Ian Gordon.” About the music, Stephen Holden writing in the New York Times said, “If the music of Ricky Ian Gordon had to be defined by a single quality, it would be the bursting effervescence infusing 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.”

His hour-long song cycle in two acts, Orpheus and Euridice, was given a very well received stage debut as part of the Lincoln Center New Visions/ American Songbook series under the auspices of the Great Performers series on October 5, 2005. It was directed and choreographed by Doug Varone and performed by Elizabeth Futral, Soprano, Todd Palmer, Clarinet and Melvin Chen, Piano. Writing in New York Magazine, Peter G Davis offered this assessment: “Both Gordon’s text and music are couched in an accessible idiom of disarming lyrical directness, a cleverly disguised faux naïveté that always resolves dissonant situations with grace and a sure sense of dramatic effect – the mark of a born theater composer.”

Other recent works include and flowers pick themselves…, 5 Songs for High Voice and Orchestra on poems by e.e. cummings (commissioned by Michigan State University and first performed there by Melanie Helton on October 29, 2005) and The Grapes of Wrath, a full-scale opera with libretto by Michael Korie based on John Steinbeck’s celebrated novel. The Grapes of Wrath had its hugely successful premiere at the Minnesota Opera on February 10, 2007 in a production that travels to Utah Opera in May. Commenting in the Los Angeles Time, critic Mark Swed writes: “…the sense of excitement was unmistakable…the greatest glory of the opera is Gordon’s ability to musically flesh out the entire 11-member Joad clan…Each has a distinct musical style. Each is sympathetic. Gordon’s other great achievement is to merge Broadway and opera…and it is greatly enhanced by his firm control over ensembles and his sheer love for the operatic voice.”