Benjamin Gordon (conductor)

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Benjamin Gordon (* in California , USA ) is an American conductor , arranger and composer . Since 2001 he has lived in Hamburg , Germany .

education

Benjamin Gordon majored in cello at the University of California, Berkeley and received a scholarship to study conducting at Yale University .

Professional background

While still a student at Yale, Gordon founded the Berkeley Sinfonia and the Yale College Opera , where he directed Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro , among others . Gordon made his debut as a conductor in Germany in 2002 at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg with Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia . He regularly attended the master classes of Zoltán Peskó and Péter Eötvös at the International Bartók Festival in Szombathely , where he also conducted a concert performance of Bluebeard's Castle in 2007 . From 2009 to 2013 Gordon directed the Orchestra of the Musikfreunde Bremen, with which he performed the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven in 2012 on the 90th anniversary of the orchestra.

Since the 2007/08 season, the focus of his musical activity has been on the direction of the renowned children's opera series Opera piccola at the Hamburg State Opera , where Gordon deals with the independent arrangements of children's operas . In this way, Gordon has meanwhile prepared more than 1,000 singing and music-making children and young people for their first opera performance. The concept of the "Opera piccola" series is precisely to cast the vocal parts (with a few exceptions) and the orchestra with children and young people and to actively involve them in the process of creating the opera. In 2014, Gordon conducted the world premiere of Samuel Hogarth's Dwarf Nose .

During his time as music director for the children's opera at the Hamburg State Opera, Benjamin Gordon began to compose himself. In 2014 he composed his first opera "Die Hamburger Sindbadauken" based on the libretto by Francis Hüsers .

Works

  • "Five love songs for soprano and orchestra" orchestration of Schubert songs, texts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Marianne von Willemer
  • "Six Wanderer Songs for Tenor and Orchestra" orchestration by Schubert songs, texts by Johann Gabriel Seidl
  • "Seven songs from the swan song for baritone and string orchestra" orchestration by Schubert songs, texts by Ludwig Rellstab
  • New version of the opera The Black Spider by Judith Weir (Music Sales Verlag)
  • New version of the opera Eloise by Karl Jenkins (Boosey & Hawkes)
  • English version of the opera Pinocchio by Pierangelo Valtinoni (Boosey & Hawkes)
  • English version of the opera The Snow Queen by Pierangelo Valtinoni (Boosey & Hawkes)
  • Children's opera Die Hamburger Sindbadauken (world premiere in February 2015 at the Hamburg State Opera)

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Accompanying material for children's operas, Deutsche Welle, accessed : May 2, 2015.  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 233 kB). @1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.dw.de  
  2. ^ Sören Ingwersen (2015). The State Opera under Simone Young , p. 212. Dölling and Galitz Verlag, Hamburg. ISBN 9783862180714 .
  3. ↑ Daniel Kaiser. "Musical was yesterday - the music of the" Hamburger Sindbadauken "is for gourmets" ( Memento from February 12, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), NDR , Hamburg, February 9, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Gordon, Benjamin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American conductor, arranger and composer
DATE OF BIRTH 20th century
PLACE OF BIRTH California , USA