The music of American composer Gordon Getty has been widely performed in North America and Europe in such prestigious 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.  Getty’s earliest opera, Plump Jack, was first performed by the San Francisco Symphony and was revived in concert version by Ulf Schirmer and the Münchner Rundfunkorchester, a performance which was simulcast on Bavarian Radio.  Getty’s opera, The Canterville Ghost, based on the story by Oscar Wilde, premiered at Oper Leipzig. Another Gothic themed one-act opera, Usher House, was staged by Welsh National Opera and San Francisco Opera. Both operas are slated to be performed together as a double bill at Los Angeles Opera and the Center for Contemporary Opera in New York. 

Getty’s Joan and the Bells, a cantata portraying the trial and execution of Joan of Arc, has been performed throughout the US, Europe and Russia, notably at Windsor Castle with Mikhail Pletnev conducting.  His ballet Ancestor Suite was given its premiere staging by the Bolshoi Ballet and Russian National Orchestra at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

PENTATONE and Gordon Getty have a long and fruitful relationship.  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; two albums of choral works, Young America and The Little Match Girl; an album of the composer’s solo-piano works played by Conrad Tao; and The White Election, a much-performed song cycle on poems by Emily Dickinson.  Other song cycles include Poor Peter and Four Dickinson Songs, both recorded by Lisa Delan and pianist Kristin Pankonin on their PENTATONE recitals And If the Song Be Worth a Smile and The Hours Begin to Sing.

Getty’s music is published by Rork Music.