Music and Words with 2G composer Michael Zev Gordon

The composer Michael Zev Gordon talks about his new composition 'A Kind of Haunting' - a collaboration with the scholar Marianne Hirsch and poet Jacqueline Saphra. In it, he tells his own personal story about growing up with family silence around the Holocaust, and how, only many years later, he discovered what happened to his grandfather in Poland in 1941.

In words and music, the piece reflects on how the 'Second and Third generations' inherit not only what those who survived remember but also what they suppress. Michael will talk about how music and the arts can help shine light on these issues and the feelings they engender.

Michael will be interviewed by Dr Brian Fine, also Second Generation.

Following the presentation, we will open up for discussion. We look forward to a lively and thought-provoking event.

Michael Zev Gordon is a composer, principally of instrumental and vocal music, having written a wide variety of forces and genres. He is Professor of Composition at the Department of Music at the University of Birmingham. His work has been performed by many leading artists, including Britten Sinfonia, London Sinfonietta, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and EXAUDI.

Michael's awards include the 2004 Prix Italia for work on the subject of memory, and twice winner of the choral category of the British Composer Awards in 2008 and 2011 on the subject of music and genes.

In recent years, he has been featured composer at the Park Lane Group series and on the CoMA summer school. His work for piano, On Memory, played by Andrew Zolinsky, was one of The Times’ top 10 contemporary albums of 2010; while Tête-à-Tête and CHROMA premiered Act 1 of Icarus at the Riverside Studios in summer 2011. An extract of Icarus was also presented in the Royal Opera House’s Exposure programme at the Linbury Theatre in London in 2012. Further performances in 2012 also include Glass Mountain, a new work for CHROMA’s 15th birthday celebrations at King’s Place; and Bohortha, a commission for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Neeme Järvi. 2013 sees a new work for tenor, horn and strings at the Cheltenham Music Festival.

The work Michael discusses today was premiered at the Barbican. Gordon, MZ, Hirsch, M & Saphra, J, A Kind of Haunting: for two narrators, baritone and string orchestra, 2025, Composition, Composers Edition.