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Michael Zev Gordon
On Memory

Andrew Zolinsky, piano

NMC D144

D144 Cover
  • Michael Zev Gordon is Senior Lecturer in Composition at the University of Southampton and Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music.
  • Gordon studied composition in the UK with Robin Holloway, Oliver Knussen and John Woolrich, in Italy with Franco Donatoni and in the Netherlands with Louis Andriessen.
  • Awards include a 2004 Prix Italia for A Pebble in the Pond, an extended radiophonic work on the subject of memory; and winner of the choral category of the 2008 British Composer Awards, for This Night, written for the choir of King's College, Cambridge.
  • Andrew Zolinsky won the San Francisco International Piano Concerto Competition in 1998.


  • The works on this disc span nearly twenty years of Michael Zev Gordon's output and demonstrate the development and change in his style from the atonal soundworld of Touch to the more recent harmonic, lyrical qualities of On Memory, a series of miniatures inspired by the way our brain conjures up hazy memories.   Gordon uses a Couperin keyboard piece, a Bach Sarabande and a fragment from a Klezmer dance as starting points, which provide a brief moment of recognition before tailing off into blurry soundworlds.
          On Memory     41'24
    01. this departing landscape     1'50
    02. distant charms     3'27
    03. a tango there was     4'49
    04. unbitten in the palm     4'21
    05. hot moons, cold moons     5'16
    06. running down     2'25
    07. a space in which one might fall back     2'36
    08. past sounds     1'29
    09. sepia-coloured... the white mare... far, far down by the stream     3'00
    10. tuscan dreams     3'18
    11. forbidden fruit     4'19
    12. closing cabbalistic chorales     4'34

    13. Far Away     4'41

    14. High Ground     2'09

    15. Crystal Clear     0'58

    16. Laid Bare     2'28

    17. Touch     10'08

          Total timing     62'26



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