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Biography
American composer Gordon Getty has made a lifetime of contributions to the world of classical music. He was awarded the prestigious European Culture Prize in 2019 recognizing his extraordinary legacy.
Gordon Getty's music has been performed in such prestigious venues as New York's Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London's Royal Festival Hall, Vienna's Brahmssaal, Moscow's Tchaikovsky Hall and Bolshoi Theatre, and Beijing's National Centre for the Performing Arts (“The Egg”), as well as at the Aspen, Spoleto and Bad Kissingen Festivals, and Festival Napa Valley.
Plump Jack, Getty's first opera drawing on the adventures of Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff, was premiered by the San Francisco Symphony and has been revived by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, London Philharmonia, and Munich Radio Orchestra among other ensembles. Usher House, based on the story by Edgar Allan Poe, received its premiere in Cardiff with the Welsh National Opera. The Canterville Ghost, based on the Oscar Wilde story, premiered with Germany's Leipzig Opera. These last two were later united in a double bill dubbed “Scare Pair” and presented in New York with the Center for Contemporary Opera and in Los Angeles by LA Opera.
Joan and the Bells, a cantata portraying the trial and execution of Joan of Arc, has been widely performed, notably at Windsor Castle with Mikhail Pletnev conducting. Getty's ballet Ancestor Suite was given its premiere staging by the Bolshoi Ballet with the Russian National Orchestra at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, and has been reprised in Beijing, Shanghai, and several American cities.
Getty has enjoyed a fruitful relationship with the Pentatone label. In addition to his three operas and Joan, Pentatone has released an album devoted to six of his orchestral pieces, with Sir Neville Marriner conducting the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields; three albums of his choral works, Young America, The Little Match Girl and his latest, Beauty Come Dancing; an album of his solo piano works with Conrad Tao; and The White Election, a much-performed song cycle on poems by Emily Dickinson.
Getty revisited the poetry of Emily Dickinson in his Four Dickinson Songs, recorded by Lisa Delan and Kristin Pankonin on their recital album The Hours Begin to Sing. A newly orchestrated version of the cycle is featured on Lisa Delan's album A Certain Slant of Light with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille.
The composer's latest project is an opera based on the novella Goodbye Mr. Chips. It will be given its world premiere at Festival Napa Valley in 2020.
Gordon Getty's life as a composer is the subject of the documentary film There Will Be Music by director Peter Rosen, which has been broadcast on PBS in the U.S. and in Europe on ARTE, and also appeared in film festivals and programs across the country.
His music is published by Rork Music.
OPERA America/Opera.ca Grants Awarded
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| GRANT NAME | YEAR | Opera for the Eighties and Beyond | 1988 | Opera for the Eighties and Beyond | 1988 | Opera for the Eighties and Beyond | 1988 | Opera for the Eighties and Beyond | 1988 |
Productions
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Artist Information
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