Songs of Our Time
Ricky Ian Gordon's credits include the musicals My Life With Albertine, with Richard Nelson at Playwrights Horizons (Cast Recording, PS Classics), Dream True, with Tina Landau at The Vineyard Theater, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, with Jean Claude Van Itallie at Houston Grand Opera and The American Music Theater Festival, Only Heaven, with Langston Hughes for Encompass Opera (Recorded on PS Classics), Stonewall/ Night Variations, with Tina Landau for En Garde Arts, States Of Independence, also with Ms. Landau for The American Music Theater Festival, and Autumn Valentine, with Dorothy Parker, for Opera Omaha's 1992 Fall Festival. As composer-in-residence at The Lyric Opera of Chicago in 2001 and 2002, he wrote Morning Star, with William Hoffman. On March 13th, 2001, at Lincoln Center, he was presented as part of the American Songbook Series. 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." Mr. Gordon's songs have been performed and recorded by many internationally known singers, including Renée Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, Audra McDonald, Kristin Chenoweth, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Andrea Marcovicci, Harolyn Blackwell, and Betty Buckley. Notable recordings include two Nonesuch CDs: Audra McDonald's Way Back to Paradise and Bright Eyed Joy: The Songs of Ricky Ian Gordon. Water Music/A 2- Part Requiem was included on Of Eternal Light, the Catalyst/BMG Classics CD with Musica Sacra conducted by Richard Westenberg. Harolyn Blackwell, Strange Hurt, recorded Genius Child, his cycle of ten Langston Hughes settings, for RCA Victor, on the CD.Current projects include an opera based on The Grapes of Wrath with Michael Korie for Minnesota and Utah, and For My Family, for which he is also the book writer and lyricist