Renowned American Composer Joins the Dewberry School of Music for a Mason Opera Residency

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Ricky Ian Gordon, world-renowned composer, writer, and educator.

Students and Mason Arts’ audiences have a rare opportunity to experience the music and creative insights of one of America’s most successful and prolific composers of art song, opera, and musical theater, Ricky Ian Gordon.

Gordon will be an artist-in-residence with Mason Opera, within George Mason University’s Reva and Sid Dewberry Family School of Music from April 14-18, 2025.

During this week-long residency, Gordon will work with the school’s voice, musical theater, and composition students in class and individual sessions, many of which will be open to the public. Students will work with him on pieces from his extensive catalog of vocal music, and Mason Opera will present the first university production of his stunning opera “27”.

Gordon will return for Mason Opera’s performances of “27” on April 25, 26, and 27 in Harris Theatre on the university’s Fairfax campus, where he will introduce each performance with his own insights about this unique and engaging opera.

George Mason’s Voice Area and Opera Program Director, Professor Patricia Miller shared “We are thrilled and very fortunate to have celebrated American composer, Ricky Ian Gordon as an artist-in-residence at George Mason University, and to have our Mason students in vocal studies, composition and opera, experience firsthand the brilliant artistry of his art song compositions and his outstanding opera, “27.”

After studying piano, composition, and acting at Carnegie Mellon University, Ricky Ian Gordon settled in New York City, where he quickly emerged as a leading writer of vocal music that spans art song, opera, and musical theater. Mr. Gordon’s songs have been performed and or recorded by such internationally renowned singers as Renee Fleming, Dawn Upshaw, Nathan Gunn, Judy Collins, Kelli O’Hara, Audra MacDonald, Kristin Chenoweth, Nicole Cabell, the late Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Frederica Von Stade, Nadine Sierra, Andrea Marcovicci, Harolyn Blackwell, and Betty Buckley, among many others.

Stephen Holden, writing in the New York Times said, “If the music of Ricky Ian Gordon had to be defined by a single quality, it would be the bursting effervescence in fusing songs that blithely blur the lines between art song and the high-end Broadway music of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim…It’s caviar for a world gorging on pizza.”

Mason Opera stage director, celebrated former Metropolitan Opera tenor, Richard Leech, now George Mason faculty said, “I am inspired every day by our wonderfully talented students as they meet the challenges, and discover the joy of presenting a work as brilliant as Ricky’s “27”. We couldn’t be more excited to have him join us to work with our students on interpreting his music. It is an honor.”

In ”27”, the audience is invited into the famed Paris salon, located at 27 Rue de Fleurus, of American writer, Gertrude Stein and her wife, Alice B. Toklas as the two weather both world wars. Along the way, while the paintings sing, the audience meets Picasso, Matisse, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and others among the great artists and writers that Stein hosted and mentored. Originally commissioned by the Opera Theater of St. Louis, “27” received its world premiere in 2014. In a score of just over 90 minutes, Gordon’s spritely music and Royce Vavrek’s clever libretto take the audience on a journey spanning two world wars and give a clear-eyed look at the inspiring and controversial life of this legendary author.

Commenting on his residency at George Mason, Gordon wrote: “I am so looking forward to working with the incredible Richard Leech on an opera of mine that is SO DEAR TO MY HEART! “27” sprang to mind in an INSTANT when I was asked to write an opera for Stephanie Blythe, as Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas are lifelong heroes of mine, and their salon became for me a paradigm of how I wanted my life to look, and for George Mason to be doing the first college production is thrilling as well as brave and innovative! Bravi tutti!”.