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Stewart Gordon | |
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![]() Stewart Gordon (1989) | |
Background information | |
Birth name | Stewart Lynell Gordon |
Born | August 28, 1930 |
Origin | Kansas, US |
Genres | Classical |
Occupation(s) | Pianist, composer, author, editor |
Instrument(s) | Piano |
Years active | 1960–present |
Website | www.stewartgordon.com |
Stewart Lynell Gordon is an American musician, teacher, writer, editor, composer, and impresario. Gordon is Professor of Keyboard Studies at the USC Thornton School of Music of the University of Southern California.
As a student, Stewart Gordon studied with a number of prominent pedagogues and concert artists including Olga Samaroff, Walter Gieseking, Cécile Staub Genhart, and Adele Marcus. As a performing pianist, Gordon toured extensively throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas. Gordon's commercially issued recordings include works by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Scriabin, Ellis Kohs, Luis de Frietas-Branco, and the complete Rachmaninoff Preludes, although almost all of these are long out of print and only obtainable secondhand. He is officially a Steinway Artist, and he serves on the board of directors of the Steinway Society of Riverside County.
His academic career has included posts at Wilmington College in Ohio, the University of Maryland, where he served as Dean of the Music School, and Queens College, City University of New York, where he served as a Provost and a Vice-President in the Academic Affairs department.
As a composer Gordon has primarily channeled his efforts into musical theater, and his shows have been successfully produced in New York City, Washington, D.C., Savannah, Hollywood, and Hawaii. His musical Libby generated renewed national interest in the historic cabaret performer Libby Holman. Earlier in his career he also wrote the music for the historic pageant "Spirit of the Navy", a project initiated by the Chief of Naval Operations to celebrate the US Navy's 200th birthday. He is involved with book writer Robert Weller in creating a new musical based on the history of Palm Springs, California.
He founded the William Kapell International Piano Competition and acted as its director for 15 years. In New York City he founded the Cultural Heritage Competition and the Great Gospel Competition. He is a past President of the Virginia Waring International Piano Competition, and holds the title of Director of International Outreach. In Savannah, Georgia, he founded the Savannah Onstage Music Festivals, as well as its American Traditions Competition, and acted as their artistic director for 14 years. He has served as an adjudicator for many international competitions, including the Gina Bachauer, William Kapell, Rosa Ponselle, Virginia Waring and the finals of the Canadian Music Competitions, and Music Teachers National Competitions at the regional and national levels.
Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was a Russian composer and virtuoso pianist. Before 1903, Scriabin was greatly influenced by the music of Frédéric Chopin and composed in a relatively tonal, late-Romantic idiom. Later, and independently of his influential contemporary Arnold Schoenberg, Scriabin developed a much more dissonant musical language that had transcended usual tonality but was not atonal, which accorded with his personal brand of metaphysics. Scriabin found significant appeal in the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk as well as synesthesia, and associated colours with the various harmonic tones of his scale, while his colour-coded circle of fifths was also inspired by theosophy. He is often considered the main Russian Symbolist composer and a major representative of the Russian Silver Age.
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