The music of the American composer Gordon Getty has been performed in such venues as New York’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Royal Festival Hall, Vienna’s Brahmssaal, and Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Hall and Bolshoi Theatre, as well as at the Aspen, Spoleto, and Bad Kissingen Festivals.

The first of his three operas, Plump Jack, involving adventures of Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff, was premiered by the San Francisco Symphony and has been revived by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the BBC Philharmonic, the Munich Radio Orchestra and the London Philharmonia, among other ensembles. His opera Usher House (after Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher) was first performed by the Welsh National Opera and remounted by the San Francisco Opera. His third opera, The Canterville Ghost (after a tale by Oscar Wilde), received its premiere at the Leipzig Opera. Usher House and The Canterville Ghost were presented together as Scare Pair by the Los Angeles Opera, as well as by the Center for Contemporary Opera in New York.

Joan and the Bells, a cantata portraying the trial and execution of Joan of Arc, has been widely performed, notably at Windsor Castle with Mikhail Pletnev conducting. His ballet Ancestor Suite was given its premiere staging by the Bolshoi Ballet and the Russian National Orchestra at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow and has been reprised for performances in China.

Getty enjoys a strong relationship with our label.Beauty Come Dancing was the third album of Getty’s choral work released by PENTATONE. The first was Young America, performed by the San Francisco Symphony and Chorus (Michael Tilson Thomas conducting) and the Eric Ericson Chamber Choir and the Russian National Orchestra (conducted by Alexander Verdernikov). The second, The Little Match Girl, was recorded with Asher Fisch conducting the Bavarian Radio Symphony Choir and the Munich Radio Orchestra.

In addition to his three operas and Joan and the Bells, PENTATONE has released an album devoted to six of his orchestral pieces, with Sir Neville Marriner conducting the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields; an album of his solo-piano works played by Conrad Tao; and The White Election, a much-performed song cycle on poems by Emily Dickinson, recorded with soprano Lisa Delan. Also, Getty's Four Dickinson Songs appear on Delan's Pentatone album A Certain Slant of Light.

Getty was the subject of the 2016 documentary film There Will Be Music, by director Peter Rosen. PBS broadcast the film around the country in 2017.

His music is published by Rork Music.