Title: Reliquary
Commission: 2004
Completed: 2005
Instrumentation: sextet including flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin/viola, cello, percussion, piano
Premiere Location: Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Premiere Ensemble: Eighth Blackbird
Notes:

Gordan Beeferman is a composer, pianist, and improviser based in New York City. An eclectic and omnivorous musician who straddles numerous genres, 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). Four Parts Five, an extended work for his new quintet, was released on Innova Recordings in 2015—“Packed with humour, mischief, and an urge to dance” (The Wire). Beeferman has composed two operas with librettist Charlotte Jackson: The Rat Land, praised as “complex and daringly modern” by the New York Times, and The Enchanted Organ: A Porn Opera, scenes of which have been performed to sold-out theater and nightclub audiences in downtown Manhattan. Notable commissions and/or performances of his compositions have come from the 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 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 twenty years, Beeferman has performed at venues and series including Roulette, MATA, and the Vision Festival. In 2016 he performed his first solo concerts in Europe, and original and improvised music with ensembles in Germany and Amsterdam. He has also performed as a pianist/keyboardist in Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach and Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, and has co-curated concerts of the AIDS Quilt Songbook in New York City and Philadelphia. Beeferman’s recordings are available on Minor Amusements, Different Track, Clang, Innova, OutNow, Generate, Genuin, and Summit Records. He is a 2016 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow.