Gordon Sherwood

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Gordon Sherwood (born August 25, 1929 in Evanston , Illinois , USA ; † May 2, 2013 in Schongau , Upper Bavaria ) was an American composer .

Life

Gordon Sherwood completed his music studies (against the wishes of his father, who had planned a military career for his son) at Western University in Michigan, USA, and at the Academy in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, with a Master of Arts degree. In 1957 he won first prize at the 12th George Gershwin Memorial Competition for the 3rd and 4th movements of his first symphony , and these two movements were premiered in New York's Carnegie Hall by the New York Philharmonic under Dimitri Mitropoulos . The complete world premiere took place 45 years later, in 2002, in Germany. Sherwood continued his musical education in Tanglewood with Aaron Copland . A Fulbright scholarship took him to Hamburg in 1959 , where he studied composition with Philipp Jarnach . He completed his training at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome with Goffredo Petrassi .

After that he began an unsteady life that led him halfway around the world: he was a bar pianist in Lebanon , a film composer in Egypt , followed by a longer stay in Kenya (where he obtained a university degree in Kiswahili ). Several stays in India , Japan and Latin America (especially Costa Rica ) followed. In the 1980s he stranded penniless in Paris and made a living as a beggar for many years without giving up his compositional work. Gordon Sherwood last lived in a diaconal institution in Herzogsägmühle / Bavaria, where he continued to compose. His works were digitized in the telecenter of the Herzogsägmühle.

Gordon Sherwood had been married to singer Ruth Sherwood since 1959, but had been separated from his wife since the early 1980s.

Gordon Sherwood died on May 2, 2013 in Schongau. In his will, he entrusted his musical legacy to the pianist Masha Dimitrieva .

plant

Gordon Sherwood's catalog raisonné has 143 entries, most of which are awaiting publication. The oeuvre includes chamber music as well as orchestral works, instrumental music as well as vocal music, secular as well as religious works. Stylistically, the compositions are based on his models, v. a. George Gershwin , Béla Bartók and Dmitri Schostakowitsch , but they all show a very personal language in which Indian and Arabic influences are mixed. The music is characterized by the fact that it is easily accessible to the inexperienced ear despite its highly complex structure. The difficulty of a simple classification is perhaps the reason why Gordon Sherwood has remained relatively unknown so far. The conductors Horst Neumann (former director of the radio choirs of the NDR and MDR ) and Werner Andreas Albert (chief conductor of the Australian radio), who played Sherwood's first symphony together with his first piano concerto a. a. recorded on CD. Further pieces by Sherwood can be found in isolated anthologies. One of the outstanding works is “Memories of Waters”, a “cross-over oratorio” about the Danube, which Gordon Sherwood wrote together with the world music group “ Dissidents ”.

His works have recently premiered in Herzogsägmühle near Peiting and in the MARTa Herford Museum . On July 1, 2006 there was the world premiere of four of his piano works in Herzogsägmühle, played by Masha Dimitrieva . On May 2, 2014, Sherwood's 2nd Symphony ("Blues Symphony") was premiered by the Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Evan Christ Gordon at the Cottbus State Theater . His complete works for organ were performed for the first time on June 12, 2015 by the Nuremberg organist Marcel Rode in the Friedenskirche (Essen) . The organ works were performed in the USA in 2016 and in 2017 in the Basilica Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles (Cartago) .

The pianist Masha Dimitrieva is planning a complete recording of the works for solo piano by Gordon Sherwood, as well as a complete recording of his songs together with the soprano Felicitas Breest . The first CD of both projects was released as a first recording.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Norman Lebrecht: Sad news: the beggar-composer has died. In: www.artsjournal.com. May 2, 2013, archived from the original on May 10, 2014 ; accessed on November 29, 2019 (English).
  2. ^ Sonus Eterna - Discography. In: sonuseterna.de. Retrieved December 2, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Sherwood, Gordon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American composer
DATE OF BIRTH August 25, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Evanston (Illinois) , USA
DATE OF DEATH May 2, 2013
Place of death Schongau