Performances + Events
Faculty Recital: Eden MacAdam-Somer featuring Gordon Beeferman
Jordan Hall
The program features Beeferman's works, drawing on a multitude of genres and influences, including songs, compositions and improvisations on solo piano, and scored improvisations for trio and large ensemble. Tonight's program also features The Sway, a piece commissioned by and written for Eden MacAdam-Somer in honor of the CMA department's 50th anniversary. This extraordinary work for solo performer on voice, violin, and percussive dance joins others on the program in blurring the lines between contemporary improvisation, classical virtuosity, and avant-jazz innovation.
Artist(s)
Gordon Beeferman is a composer, pianist, and improviser based in New York City, He has created and performed innovative opera, chamber and orchestra music, avant-jazz, and numerous collaborations with choreographers, writers, and video artists. His varied projects include bands that perform his compositions: an Organ Trio; Other Life Forms, a quartet; and Music for an Imaginary Band, a septet—“a commanding avant-jazz ensemble” (Time Out New York).
Beeferman has composed three operas with librettist Charlotte Jackson: “The Rat Land,” praised as “complex and daringly modern” by The New York Times, “The Enchanted Organ: A Porn Opera,” scenes of which have been performed to sold-out theater and nightclub audiences in downtown Manhattan, and The Ninth Floor, a one-act supported by the MAP Fund.
His music has been performed by New York City Opera orchestra, Momenta Quartet, Minnesota Orchestra, Albany Symphony, California EAR Unit, St. Urban Concerts, Talea Ensemble, Quartet New Generation recorder collective, and others. He has received commissions from the MAP Fund, Fromm Foundation, the BMI Foundation, and Concert Artists Guild, three BMI Student Composer Awards, a Tanglewood fellowship, and residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Copland House, and Ucross.
An active member of the New York music scene for over 25 years, Beeferman has performed at venues and series including Roulette, MATA, and the Vision Festival. Beeferman’s recordings are available on zOaR, Minor Amusements, Different Track, Clang, Innova, OutNow, Generate, Genuin, and Summit Records. He is a 2016 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow.
