Onstage at Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Troy, NY
where Anonymous Man was recorded in March 2018. Image by Kevin Vondrak.
We've waited a long time to get this one right. Michael Gordon's concert-length magnum opus, Anonymous Man, is a major new CD coming in March. To get the party started, Cantaloupe Music has released one of the longer and dramatically virtuosic tracks as a single on Spotify. A 'single' from The Crossing. Soon we'll be available on your diner's tabletop jukebox!
Gordon drew inspiration from his neighborhood in lower Manhattan:
"When I moved into my loft on Desbrosses Street, the streets were empty, since few people lived there. Over time, the neighborhood changed from an industrial warehouse district to a residential area. Anonymous Man is a memoir about my block; it's built around my memories of moving in, meeting my future wife for the first time there, and conversations I've had with two men who made their home on the loading dock across the street."
Michael Gordon's first eight years were lived at a great distance - geographically and experientially - from his life today in New York when his Eastern European parents made their home in the jungle on the outskirts of Managua, Nicaragua. Travel Guide to Nicaragua is his hazy memory of this strange and good life of exotic tarantulas and parrot bites. Yet, Michael's third substantial work for The Crossing reaches beyond his childhood, pondering the world of Mayans and Aztecs, and drawing on words of poet Rubén Darío and those of Mark Twain following his remarkable trip to this small, beautiful country.
