Theodore Gordon

Education

Ph.D., History and Theory of Music, University of Chicago Chicago United States

M.A., History and Theory of Music, University of Chicago Chicago IL

B.A., The Arts in the Humanities, Yale University New Haven CT

Artistic and Creative Activities

Gordon, T. (2019). Sounding Circuits: Audible Histories. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Gordon, T. (2019). Dream Dance: The Art of Ed Emschwiller: An Evening with Joan La Barbara and Morton Subotnick. Lightbox Film Center.

Books

Gordon, T. (2025). The Composer’s Black Box: Cybernetics & Instrumentality in American Experimental Music. University of California Press.

Journal Articles

Gordon, T. (2022). “Androgynous Music:” Pauline Oliveros’s Early Cybernetic Improvisation. Contemporary Music Review, 40(4). 386–408.

Erbe, T., & Gordon, T. (2022). Tom Erbe Interviewed by Theodore Gordon. Organised Sound, 27(1). 26–31.

Gordon, T., Rings, S., & Kotche, G. (2019). What Makes a Song Songy? Interview with Glenn Kotche & Steven Rings”. Portable Gray, 1(2). 38–43.

Book Chapters

Gordon, T. (2024). 'On-Line Computational Thought': John C. Lilly in American Experimental Music. In Zeavin, H., & Matthias, J. (Eds.), Reconsidering John C. Lilly MIT Press.

Gordon, T. (2023). The Buchla Music Easel: From Cyberculture to Market Culture. In Kitzmann, A., Engstrom, E., Thoren, C., & Teboul, E. (Eds.), Modular Synthesis: Patching Machines and People London, UK. Routledge.

Media Contributions

(2019). Cashmere Radio.

(2019). The Washington Post.

Presentations

Gordon, T. (2024, May 30). Instrumentalizing the Synthesizer. American Musical Instrument Society. Phoenix, AZ

Gordon, T. (2024, May 30). Why Instruments Fail . American Musical Instrument Society. Phoenix, AZ

Gordon, T. (2024, November 30). Sun Ra and the Moog: Freedom, Discipline, and Sound. American Musicological Society Annual Meeting. New Orleans, LA: American Musicological Society.

Gordon, T. (2024, October 30). Sun Ra and the Moog: Freedom, Discipline, and Sound. Peabody Institute Musicology Colloquium. Baltimore, MD: Peabody Institute at the Johns Hopkins University.

Gordon, T. (2024, November 30). The Short Life and Long Afterlife of the Buchla Music Easel. American Musicological Society Annual Meeting. New Orleans, LA: American Musicological Society.

Gordon, T. (2024, April 30). New Sensations: Lilly Diffracted Through American Experimental Music. Reconsidering John C. Lilly. Online

Gordon, T. (2021, October 31). Programming and Meta-Programming in the Electro-Organism: Learning to Play the Human Body as an Electronic Musical Instrument. Society for the Social Studies of Science. Toronto, ON, Canada

Gordon, T. (2021, April 24). No Ideas But In (Doing) Things: The Politics and Materialities of Alvin Lucier’s Early Works. Northwestern University New Music Conference. Evanston, IL [virtual]: Northwestern University.

Gordon, T. (2020, February 21). No Ideas But In Things? Cybernetics and Materiality in Alvin Lucier's Early Electronic Music. Columbia University Department of Music Colloquium Series. New York, NY: Columbia University Department of Music.

Gordon, T. (2020, February 28). Interspecies Feedback in Alvin Lucier's Vespers. Circulations: Symposium on Live Audio Feedback in Art. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.

Gordon, T. (2020, October 29). Echolocating the Human. Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting. Virtual: Society for Ethnomusicology.

Gordon, T. (2019, July 3). "Cybernetics, Modularity, Subjectivity". Synth Library Prague. Prague, Czech Republic: Synth Library Prague/ZVUK.

Gordon, T. (2019, June 24). Music in the Cybernetics Moment. Sonic Circulations. London, UK: Kings College London.

Gordon, T. (2019, June 7). The Political and Social Legacies of Bay Area Experimentalism. Indexical. Santa Cruz, CA: Indexical (performance series).

Gordon, T. (2019, November 30). The Anonymous Artists of America and the Buchla Modular Electronic Music System. American Musicological Society Annual Meeting. Boston, MA: American Musicological Society.

Gordon, T. (2019, October 25). Diffracting Cybernetics at the San Francisco Tape Music Center. Recursions: Music & Cybernetics Conference. Edinburgh, Scotland, UK: University of Edinburgh.

Gordon, T. (2018, February 28). Living on the Earth: The Experimental World(ing) of Ramón Sender. After Experimental Music. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.

Gordon, T. (2017, November 10). Excavating Pauline Oliveros's Expanded Instrument System. American Musicological Society Annual Meeting. Rochester, NY: American Musicological Society.

Gordon, T. (2017, October 26). Pandit Pran Nath, Mysticism, and Music in the San Francisco Bay Area. Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting. Denver, CO: Society for Ethnomusicology.

Gordon, T. (2017, March 31). ‘The Composer’s Black-Box’: Cybernetics, Creativity, and Technology at the San Francisco Tape Music Center. Society for American Music Annual Conference. Montreal, QC, Canada: Society for American Music.

Gordon, T. (2017, June 30). The Patchwork Girl: Pauline Oliveros and Technologies of Self. Sixth International Conference on Music and Minimalism. Knoxville, TN: Society for Minimalist Music.

Gordon, T. (2017, June 30). Improvisation and Indeterminacy in the Music of Pauline Oliveros. Performing Indeterminacy. Leeds, UK: University of Leeds.

Gordon, T. (2016, April 29). Opening Buchla’s Box: Rethinking Experimentation in Electronic Music in the Early 1960s. Periods and Waves: A Conference on Sound and History. Stony Brook, NY: Stony Brook University.

Other Scholarly Works

Reviews

Gordon, T. (1970,January 1). Review of The Williamsburg Avant-Garde by Cisco Bradley. Journal of the American Musicological Society. Berkely, California: University of California Press.

Gordon, T. (2019,April 1). Review of Electronic Inspirations: Technologies of the Cold-War Musical Avant-Garde, Jennifer Iverson (Oxford). Current Musicology.

College

Professional