David Gordon
David Gordon piano September 2014
David Gordon studied mathematics and logic before embarking on a career as jazz pianist, harpsichordist and composer.
As a jazz pianist, he tours and records with his own international jazz trio, including festival appearances in the UK and Denmark, on BBC Radio 3 and a debut at London’s King’s Place in December 2011. In addition he regularly collaborates with violinist Christian Garrick and singer Jacqui Dankworth, and with spoken word in the jazz/poetry collective Riprap. He is also joint musical director of, and an explosive pianistic force in, the gypsy tango band Zum, which has toured Croatia, Finland, France, and the United States. In spring 2013, he premiered a specially-commissioned work at London’s Cadogan Hall he wrote for his trio and the London Chamber Orchestra.
As harpsichordist, he plays with many of the leading baroque orchestras, including appearances at the BBC Proms, the Musikverein in Vienna, and Carnegie Hall, New York. He has also performed with violinists Andrew Manze and Nigel Kennedy, and leads the early music/jazz group Respectable Groove, whose most recent projects, their ground-breaking versions of Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas and of ‘Bach and the Organist’s Daughter’ have been critically acclaimed both in the jazz and early music press. His solo harpsichord recitals usually include a large element of improvisation, and he has twice appeared as guest artist and director of the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra at the Risør Chamber Music Festival in Norway.
As composer, his jazz style interweaves with his knowledge of the baroque and vast understanding of innumerable diverse musical influences, and his works appear on around 20 CDs, with regular commissions to write for various groups, the award-winning community opera Semmerwater, written and premiered in 2009, and winner of an AMI award, being the result of one of these. A firm advocate of the power of improvisation, he believes that improvising – in groups or alone – allows us access to parts of the human spirit other forms of music-making cannot reach.
