Travel Guide to Nicaragua

Michael Gordon
w/ Maya Beiser, cello

Wednesday, November 16 @ 7pm

Congregation Rodeph Shalom, Philadelphia

co-presented by The Crossing and Congregation Rodeph Shalom

Go out from your land, your people, your father’s house.
"Lech le-cha"
I remember my father saying: that’s the story of my life.

– Michael Gordon, in Travel Guide to Nicaragua

Following the success of his groundbreaking Anonymous Man comes a new, concert-length autobiographical choral work from Michael Gordon. Travel Guide to Nicaragua tells the story of Michael’s quixotic early childhood in a family of European Jewish refugees living in Central America in the 1960s. A musical look at the intersection of memory and emotion, presented with candor, melancholy, and humor. Fresh, adventurous fusions emerge in this synthesis of The Crossing, the fearless cello playing of Maya Beiser, and Michael’s bold style, which The New Yorker describes as “the fury of punk rock, the nervous brilliance of free jazz, and the intransigence of classical modernism.”

Travel Guide to Nicaragua is commissioned for The Crossing by Carnegie Hall and Penn Live Arts.

Photo: salt harvesting