Listen to excerpts from "The Rat Land" -- a new chamber opera-in-progress -- on the New York City Opera's VOX website:
http://www.vox-nyco.com/html/2007/ratland.html
GORDON BEEFERMAN is a composer, pianist and improviser based in New York City. His works -- orchestral, solo, chamber, and opera -- have been been performed by the New York City Opera Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Albany Symphony, Quartet New Generation recorder collective, eighth blackbird, pianist Winston Choi, soprano Lisa Bielawa, NYC-based Anti-Social Music and many others. The New York Times wrote of his work: "Complex and daringly modern...Mr. Beeferman’s music, with its skittish melodic lines and pungent atonal harmony, is gritty, fidgety and intriguing." Beeferman has received commissions from the Fromm Foundation, the BMI Foundation, and Concert Artists Guild, and awards from BMI and ASCAP. A "fully liberated pianist" (Cadence Magazine), he has performed in a wide range of settings, from concerto soloist to free-improviser, and has collaborated regularly with dancers and other artists, including Jeff Arnal, Jane Barnes, Charlotte Jackson, Anita Cheng, Seth Misterka, Brad Kemp, Katt Hernandez, and Estelle Woodward. In New York he has performed at Roulette, the Merce Cunningham Studio, Music at the Anthology, Columbia University's Italian Academy and the Improvised and Otherwise Festival, as well as at other venues in Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Canada, and elsewhere. His recordings of improvised music are available on Generate Records. Upcoming in 2008 are premieres of his work by the California E.A.R. Unit and the American Brass Quintet.
It is great to hear another artist composing with microtones -- to my ear it sounds like we have wonderfully different ways of working with them -- and sharing the richness and beauty of the world beyond "12."
Hey Gordon, so great to hear Your music, thanks for making contact! Maybe someday we'll have a chance to play two piano improvisations... Life, Thollem
good to find you, and to see you're up and about! Any luck with the Sesame Street variations yet? Let me know if you cross the great puddle - would be great to meet again.
All the best - let those fingers hammer
your longhaired T-wood fellow alumnus from Rotterdam
The composer Gordon Beeferman, far right, and the librettist Charlotte Jackson, second from right, congratulated the performers of their opera, The Rat Land at the Skirball Center on Saturday.
