Mr. Gordon’s list of works include orchestral and chamber music--vocal and instrumental--as well as scores for theater, dance and film. His music has been called "brilliant" (Philadelphia Inquirer), "stunning" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), "wonderfully idiomatic" (Salt Lake Tribune), and "haunting" (Strings Magazine).

He has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including an ASCAP Young Composer award, an Art Futures career grant, a Fellowship to the Composer Conference at Wellesley, an Astral Career Grant from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, several NFMC awards, a grant from SACEM, and a fellowship from the Cliff Dweller Arts Foundation. His work has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the United Performing Arts Fund, the American Music Center, the American Composers Forum, the MacArthur Foundation, Meet the Composer, the Wisconsin Arts Board and the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust. He has been invited to the Atlantic Center for the Arts, La Napoule Art Foundation in Cannes, and the Guildhall in London. He has served as Composer-in-Residence at the Cliff Dweller Club in Chicago. He was recently nominated for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Elise Stoeger Prize, which honors achievement in chamber music composition, with a focus on works written in the last five years. Mr. Gordon is the 2003 recipient of the Wisconsin Arts Board Artist Fellowship in Music Composition. The Artist Fellowship Awards program offers fellowships in a variety of disciplines, including one every two years in Music Composition.

His music has been featured on the Skylight Chamber Music Series in Milwaukee, subscription concerts with the Contemporary Music Consortium in Salt Lake City, the Music 98, 99 and 2000 Festivals in Cincinnati, and the Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In August of 1998, his chamber work Lines Written in Early Spring premiered at the Musique Autour des Vieilles Pierres Festival in Normandy, France; the Chicago-based CUBE Ensemble will perform the work as part of the South Loop New Music Festival in March, 2003. His Impromptu for solo piano was performed at the Alfio Gigli Festival in Bologna, Italy in November, 2000, and included on the US tour performances of the Italian pianist Emanuele Arciuli in November, 2002. (Mr. Arciuli has commissioned a concerto from Mr. Gordon for the 2005 season.) The Riverside Symphony, resident orchestra at Columbia University, selected Mr. Gordon's Concerto in One Movement for Violin and Orchestra for performance and recording during its International New Music program, in May, 1999. His Mise en scene was selected by the Minnesota Orchestra for its Perfect Pitch program. The work was performed and recorded at Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis, in October, 1999. In May, 2003, Music at the Anthology (MATA) will include one of Mr. Gordon’s works as part of their Fourth Annual Festival of Music, with performances planned for the Angel Orensanz Foundation Center in New York City.

Commissions have included new works for the Milwaukee Symphony--which gave the world premiere of his Millenniumiana on 31 December 1999, Music Director Andreas Delfs conducting--and the Minneapolis-based vocal ensemble Dare to Breathe, which premiered Mr. Gordon's, Collage a Trois Trobar, at the Weisman Art Gallery in Minneapolis in November, 1999. The work has since received a highly acclaimed Chicago premiere. Cellist Elizabeth Morrow commissioned Lorca Musica per cello solo, a work which freely adapts themes from the composer's own 1995 ballet, The House of Bernarda Alba, and has performed it extensively in recital across the United States. Fanfare magazine called the work, "the absolute standout . . . remarkable." Lorca has been recorded on Ms. Morrow's debut disc, Soliloquy, available on the Centaur label, and was featured during the World Cello Congress in June, 2000. Mr. Gordon was selected as a Fellow to the 2000 Composers Conference at Wellesley College, where, during his two week residency, a new chamber work, Sonata da chroma, was performed and recorded. This multi-movement work, for mixed ensemble with harpsichord, was also featured at the Music 2000 Festival in Cincinnati.

Ensemble Aleph selected Gordon’s chamber work, Caravaggio, for inclusion in the First International Composers Forum, held in Cannes, France, 15-25 August, 2000. (Mr. Gordon was the only American composer selected.) Following the ten day residency and performances at the La Napoule Arts Foundation, Caravaggio received a formal premiere at the Theatre Dunois in Paris, on a series of five concerts, in October, 2000. Through support from the European Community Culture 2000 Program, Ensemble Aleph also toured this work through Greece, Italy and the United Kingdom in 2001. Cool RED Cool, a new work for chamber sextet, (flute, alto saxophone, trumpet, piano, percussion and bass) received the Andy Warhol Social Observer Prize, awarded in connection with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The PAFA presented the world premiere of this new work in Philadelphia on 13 September, 2000. (The Philadelphia Inquirer called the work "a stunner . . . ")

Other recent music includes a three movement work for string orchestra, An Imagined Poussin Triptych, given world premiere performances during the Riverside Symphony Midwest tour, in March, 2001. Sones sueño del Maya, a newly commissioned work for orchestral winds and percussion based on Pre-Columbian Mayan music, premiered in Milwaukee in November, 2001, and will be featured on the University of Wisconsin Symphonic Wind Ensemble’s 2003 concert season. The Channel Islands Ballet opened their 2002-03 season with a revival of Gordon’s three act ballet after the Garcìa Lorca play, The House of Bernarda Alba. Interiors of a Courtyard, for the German guitar Duo Ahlert & Schwab, will premiere at the La Guitarra Festival in California in September, 2003; additional performances, including a national radio broadcast on WFMT in Chicago and a concert at Sundin Music Hall in Minneapolis, will follow. La tristesse durera toujours, commissioned by Ensemble Aleph, will premiere on the Music on the Edge series at the University of Pittsburgh in March, 2004, and as part of a joint composer/ensemble residency at Brigham Young University in April, 2004. The European premiere, as part of Ensemble Aleph's subscription season, will be at the Theatre Dunois in Paris in May, 2004. The new music/early music group L’Ensemble Portique will give a series of premiere performances of wrecked angels (flute, cello and guitar) in May, 2003; and a new work commissioned for UK-based ensemble Passacaglia, Stanza della Segnatura, will feature on a 2004 US tour and in concert at Wigmore Hall, London, in 2005. The work will also be included on Passacaglia broadcast concerts on WNYC in New York City and as part of an appearance on the National Public Radio program, Performance Today, in Washington, D.C. Mr. Gordon will be a featured composer on the NorthRiver Music Series, presented by the Greenwich House, in New York City, for the 2003-04 season. Mr. Gordon's concert, set for 11 March, will feature chamber music from the last five years, to be performed by colleagues from the United States and Europe.