David M. Gordon

Music Theory and World Music Instructor

Composer and music theorist David M. Gordon holds a Ph.D. in music composition, with a secondary concentration in music theory, from the University of Chicago, where he studied with Shulamit Ran, Marta Ptaszynska, Richard Cohn, Ian Quinn, Thomas Christensen and Lawrence Zbikowski.

Gordon’s primary compositional interests include amalgamations of Western and non-Western musical languages, new and underused acoustic timbres, microtonal tuning systems, and complex rhythmic structures. He has collaborated with a wide variety of performers and ensembles, including Eighth Blackbird, the Pacifica Quartet, the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, pianist Margaret Leng Tan, the Quey Percussion Duo, Far Song, the Chicago Sinfonietta, Contempo, pianist Paul Sánchez, the Motion Trio, Arcomusical, and steelpan virtuoso Liam Teague. Gordon’s music has also been featured at numerous distinguished venues and events, including the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music, the Ojai Music Festival, the Singapore International Festival of Arts, the Caramoor Music Festival, the Bang on a Can Summer Festival, the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the San Francisco International Piano Festival, the MATA Festival, Chicago's Symphony Center and Philadelphia's Kimmel Center.

Gordon’s music theory specializations include historical, non-Western, and experimental tuning systems; theories of metric organization; analysis of world music; and form in popular music.

For further information visit David's personal website.