Michael Zev Gordon

Born in London, Michael Zev Gordon is a composer of richly expressive and colourful music in which the tonal and atonal, the old and new, happily rub shoulders. Memory, time and a search for the serene are recurring themes. Gordon has worked with many internationally leading performers, including London Sinfonietta, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, King’s College Cambridge choir and The BBC Symphony Orchestra who have commissioned him twice – for Bohortha in 2012 and a Violin Concerto in 2017, with Carolin Widmann and Sakari Oramo. He has won the choral category of the British Composer Awards twice, a Prix Italia for his radiophonic work A Pebble in the Pond; and has had two discs listed in The Times best 100 records of the year, in 2009 for On Memory, a piano music portrait disc on NMC, and in 2019 for In the Middle of Things, a chamber music portrait disc on Resonus Classics. Gordon is also strongly committed to working with students and younger composers, including at Cheltenham Festival, Juilliard, Antwerp Conservatorium, University of Oxford and as leader of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra Emerging Composers Scheme. Since 2012, he has been Professor of Composition and artistic director of CrossCurrents contemporary music festival at the University of Birmingham. He has been commissioned by the University’s Barber Institute to write a new chamber opera, Raising Icarus, planned for production in 2022.