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Composer Gordon Getty Fall/Winter News
On Saturday, November 15, 2014 the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra performed the music of American composer Gordon Getty as part of a concert titled: “Vocal Mastery: Getty, Schubert, and Strauss.” The IPO, led by Music Director David Danzmayr, presented the Chicagoland premiere of concert versions of Getty’s Overture and the aria, “No My Good Lord,” from his opera, Plump Jack.
In the Chicago Classical Review, Lawrence A. Johnson wrote of the performance, “The overture to Gordon Getty’s opera Plump Jack made a lively curtain raiser. Getty’s music is tuneful and individual and deserves to be more widely heard. The overture is a bit episodic yet paints the bibulous knight Falstaff with fine brush strokes, by turns galumphing and energetic. A loopy horn and early trumpet entrance apart, the IPO offered a vital and spirited performance with Danzmayr bringing out the quirky humor of this engaging music.”
This December, the music of Gordon Getty and fellow composers Mark Adamo, William Bolcom, John Corigliano, David Garner, Jake Heggie and Luna Pearl Woolf will be recorded at Skywalker Ranch for a new Christmas album due out in time for the 2015 holidays.
The recording will include Getty’s Four Christmas Carols and his arrangement of Silent Night; Corgliano’s “Christmas at the Cloisters” with soprano Angela Brown; William Bolcom and Joan Morris’ “Neighbors, on this Frosty Tide” from Wind in the Willows; Adamo’s “A Christmas Life” with the VOLTI chorus; Luna Pearl Woolf’s “How Bright the Darkness” with baritone Lester Lynch; Garner’s “3 Carols” with the soprano/baritone duet of Lisa Delan and Lester Lynch; and Heggie’s “On the Road to Christmas” with soprano Lisa Delan.
Looking ahead to 2015, Mr. Getty’s Four Dickenson Songs will be performed in a Distinguished Alumni Recital by Lisa Delan at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (February 11). The Leipzig Opera will present the world premiere of Mr. Getty’s third opera, The Canterville Ghost, after the short story by Oscar Wilde (May 9 and 14, June 14 and 25). Additionally, a documentary about the composer by filmmaker Peter Rosen will be released.
About Gordon Getty The music of the American composer Gordon Getty has been widely performed in North America and Europe in such prestigious venues as New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Royal Festival Hall, Vienna’s Brahmssaal, and Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Hall and Bolshoi Theatre, as well as at the Aspen, Spoleto, and Bad Kissingen Festivals. In 1986, he was honored as an Outstanding American Composer at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and he was awarded the 2003 Gold Baton of the American Symphony Orchestra League.
Getty has recently devoted considerable attention to a pair of one-act operas, Usher House (derived from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher) and The Canterville Ghost (after Oscar Wilde’s tale). The former was premiered in 2014 by the Welsh National Opera, the latter will be premiered in Leipzig in May, 2015. Getty’s first opera, Plump Jack, involving adventures of Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff, was premiered by the San Francisco Symphony in 1984 and has been revived by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, and London Philharmonia, among other ensembles. In 2011 the Munich Radio Orchestra and an international cast conducted by Ulf Schirmer performed a new concert version of Plump Jack, which was simulcast on Bavarian Radio and released by PentaTone Classics.
Getty, who studied at the San Francisco Conservatory, has produced a steady stream of compositions since the 1980s, beginning with The White Election (1981), a much-performed song cycle on poems by Emily Dickinson. It has been recorded twice—by Kaaren Erickson for Delos and by Lisa Delan for PentaTone—and has been performed in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall and the Morgan Library (in New York), the Kennedy Center and National Gallery of Art (in Washington, D.C.), and the Hermitage Theatre (in St. Petersburg, Russia), among many other venues. His three-song cycle Poor Peter (2005) was included by Lisa Delan and pianist Kristin Pankonin on their PentaTone recital And If the Song Be Worth a Smile, which features songs by six contemporary American composers.
Poetry from the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries has often inspired Getty in his vocal compositions. His choral works Victorian Scenes (1989, to texts by Tennyson and Housman) and Annabel Lee (1990, to a poem by Poe) were premiered by the Los Angeles Master Chorale and Sinfonia at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Michael Tilson Thomas led the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus in Annabel Lee in 1998 and 2004, on the latter occasion also premiering Getty’s Young America (2001), a cycle of six movements for chorus and orchestra to texts by the composer and by Stephen Vincent Benét. Joan and the Bells, a cantata portraying the trial and execution of Joan of Arc, has been performed widely since its 1998 premiere, notably in a 2004 revival in St. George’s Chapel of Windsor Castle, under the baton of Mikhail Pletnev. In 2005, PentaTone released a CD of Getty’s principal choral works up to that time, performed by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (Michael Tilson Thomas conducting) and the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir and Russian National Orchestra (conducted by Alexander Verdernikov). Getty has recently completed choral works based on Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl, and an original poem that he modeled on Masefield, The Old Man in the Night.
Although most of Getty’s works feature the voice, he has also written for orchestra, chamber ensembles, and solo piano. In 2010, PentaTone released a CD devoted to six of his orchestral pieces, with Sir Neville Marriner conducting the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and in 2013 it followed up with a CD of the composer’s solo-piano works played by Conrad Tao. Currently in preparation is a PentaTone CD of his chamber music, which will include a string-quartet version of his Four Traditional Pieces, a work that was performed in a string-orchestra arrangement by Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and the New Century Chamber Orchestra in 2012. Other recent performances of particular note featured his ballet Ancestor Suite, which in 2009 was given its premiere staging, with choreography by Vladimir Vasiliev, by the Bolshoi Ballet and Russian National Orchestra at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, and was then presented at the 2012 Festival del Sole in Napa, California. Of his compositions Getty has said: “My style is undoubtedly tonal, though with hints of atonality, such as any composer would likely use to suggest a degree of disorientation. But I’m strictly tonal in my approach. I represent a viewpoint that stands somewhat apart from the twentieth century, which was in large measure a repudiation of the nineteenth and a sock in the nose to sentimentality. Whatever it was that the great Victorian composers and poets were trying to achieve, that’s what I’m trying to achieve.”
Getty’s music is published by Rork Music.
www.gordongetty.com - = - END - = -
In the Chicago Classical Review, Lawrence A. Johnson wrote of the performance, “The overture to Gordon Getty’s opera Plump Jack made a lively curtain raiser. Getty’s music is tuneful and individual and deserves to be more widely heard. The overture is a bit episodic yet paints the bibulous knight Falstaff with fine brush strokes, by turns galumphing and energetic. A loopy horn and early trumpet entrance apart, the IPO offered a vital and spirited performance with Danzmayr bringing out the quirky humor of this engaging music.”
This December, the music of Gordon Getty and fellow composers Mark Adamo, William Bolcom, John Corigliano, David Garner, Jake Heggie and Luna Pearl Woolf will be recorded at Skywalker Ranch for a new Christmas album due out in time for the 2015 holidays.
The recording will include Getty’s Four Christmas Carols and his arrangement of Silent Night; Corgliano’s “Christmas at the Cloisters” with soprano Angela Brown; William Bolcom and Joan Morris’ “Neighbors, on this Frosty Tide” from Wind in the Willows; Adamo’s “A Christmas Life” with the VOLTI chorus; Luna Pearl Woolf’s “How Bright the Darkness” with baritone Lester Lynch; Garner’s “3 Carols” with the soprano/baritone duet of Lisa Delan and Lester Lynch; and Heggie’s “On the Road to Christmas” with soprano Lisa Delan.
Looking ahead to 2015, Mr. Getty’s Four Dickenson Songs will be performed in a Distinguished Alumni Recital by Lisa Delan at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (February 11). The Leipzig Opera will present the world premiere of Mr. Getty’s third opera, The Canterville Ghost, after the short story by Oscar Wilde (May 9 and 14, June 14 and 25). Additionally, a documentary about the composer by filmmaker Peter Rosen will be released.
About Gordon Getty The music of the American composer Gordon Getty has been widely performed in North America and Europe in such prestigious venues as New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Royal Festival Hall, Vienna’s Brahmssaal, and Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Hall and Bolshoi Theatre, as well as at the Aspen, Spoleto, and Bad Kissingen Festivals. In 1986, he was honored as an Outstanding American Composer at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and he was awarded the 2003 Gold Baton of the American Symphony Orchestra League.
Getty has recently devoted considerable attention to a pair of one-act operas, Usher House (derived from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher) and The Canterville Ghost (after Oscar Wilde’s tale). The former was premiered in 2014 by the Welsh National Opera, the latter will be premiered in Leipzig in May, 2015. Getty’s first opera, Plump Jack, involving adventures of Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff, was premiered by the San Francisco Symphony in 1984 and has been revived by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, and London Philharmonia, among other ensembles. In 2011 the Munich Radio Orchestra and an international cast conducted by Ulf Schirmer performed a new concert version of Plump Jack, which was simulcast on Bavarian Radio and released by PentaTone Classics.
Getty, who studied at the San Francisco Conservatory, has produced a steady stream of compositions since the 1980s, beginning with The White Election (1981), a much-performed song cycle on poems by Emily Dickinson. It has been recorded twice—by Kaaren Erickson for Delos and by Lisa Delan for PentaTone—and has been performed in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall and the Morgan Library (in New York), the Kennedy Center and National Gallery of Art (in Washington, D.C.), and the Hermitage Theatre (in St. Petersburg, Russia), among many other venues. His three-song cycle Poor Peter (2005) was included by Lisa Delan and pianist Kristin Pankonin on their PentaTone recital And If the Song Be Worth a Smile, which features songs by six contemporary American composers.
Poetry from the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries has often inspired Getty in his vocal compositions. His choral works Victorian Scenes (1989, to texts by Tennyson and Housman) and Annabel Lee (1990, to a poem by Poe) were premiered by the Los Angeles Master Chorale and Sinfonia at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Michael Tilson Thomas led the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus in Annabel Lee in 1998 and 2004, on the latter occasion also premiering Getty’s Young America (2001), a cycle of six movements for chorus and orchestra to texts by the composer and by Stephen Vincent Benét. Joan and the Bells, a cantata portraying the trial and execution of Joan of Arc, has been performed widely since its 1998 premiere, notably in a 2004 revival in St. George’s Chapel of Windsor Castle, under the baton of Mikhail Pletnev. In 2005, PentaTone released a CD of Getty’s principal choral works up to that time, performed by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Chorus (Michael Tilson Thomas conducting) and the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir and Russian National Orchestra (conducted by Alexander Verdernikov). Getty has recently completed choral works based on Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl, and an original poem that he modeled on Masefield, The Old Man in the Night.
Although most of Getty’s works feature the voice, he has also written for orchestra, chamber ensembles, and solo piano. In 2010, PentaTone released a CD devoted to six of his orchestral pieces, with Sir Neville Marriner conducting the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and in 2013 it followed up with a CD of the composer’s solo-piano works played by Conrad Tao. Currently in preparation is a PentaTone CD of his chamber music, which will include a string-quartet version of his Four Traditional Pieces, a work that was performed in a string-orchestra arrangement by Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and the New Century Chamber Orchestra in 2012. Other recent performances of particular note featured his ballet Ancestor Suite, which in 2009 was given its premiere staging, with choreography by Vladimir Vasiliev, by the Bolshoi Ballet and Russian National Orchestra at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow, and was then presented at the 2012 Festival del Sole in Napa, California. Of his compositions Getty has said: “My style is undoubtedly tonal, though with hints of atonality, such as any composer would likely use to suggest a degree of disorientation. But I’m strictly tonal in my approach. I represent a viewpoint that stands somewhat apart from the twentieth century, which was in large measure a repudiation of the nineteenth and a sock in the nose to sentimentality. Whatever it was that the great Victorian composers and poets were trying to achieve, that’s what I’m trying to achieve.”
Getty’s music is published by Rork Music.
www.gordongetty.com - = - END - = -
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