Michael Gordon

American composer, co-founder and artistic director of the New York collective Bang on a Can, together with Julia Wolfe and David Lang. He willingly enriches the sound with new dimensions using other media, works with filmmakers, and writes for theater and opera. Alex Ross, music critic of "The New Yorker", hears in the works of Gordon "the fury of punk rock, the nervous brilliance of free jazz and the uncompromising nature of classical modernism." The concert will include, among others, a four-movement composition for string quartet, voices and electronics "The Sad Park", written by Gordon at the request of the Kronos Quartet. It is a moving story about the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, witnessed by children playing in the playground of one of New York's kindergartens. It is not a sophisticated artistic concept, but life itself: after the attacks on the WTC, Gordon recorded his son's friends talking about what happened, and years later he built their relationship with music.