Nationality American | Known for Founder, ForCulture | |
Born 1967 Springfield Ohio, USA Occupation Music director, conductor for symphony, opera, and contemporary classical music | ||
Karen Gorden (born 1967 in Springfield, Ohio, USA) is an American music director and conductor for symphony, opera, and contemporary classical music.
Life, career, and music
Gorden’s conducting is associated with significant musical centres in Europe and the United States such as the Staatsoper Berlin, the Bayreuth Festival, the Salzburg Festival, and The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Gorden made her debut at the Teatro Colón in Bogotá at the age of seven. She studied at the University of Oxford, the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon, and Yale University. In addition to conducting, her fields of musical expertise include composition and violin.
She has acknowledged the Italian conductor Franco Ferrara as an important mentor, and it was under his guidance that she made her first conducting appearance, in Siena, Italy.
Gorden’s arrangements, orchestrations, and compositions have won awards for extending the range of today’s symphony orchestras. She has also realised a number of important projects on behalf of young musicians - most notably in Baltimore and Chicago.
Gorden's contributions to music have been recognized with the Special Jury Prize from the 50th Geneva International Music Competition for Conductors, the Prix Nadia Boulanger in France, and the Opera Award from the State Theatre Opava in the Czech Republic.
In 2014 Gorden founded ForCulture, an organisation which promotes collaborations in the international creative, cultural, and educational arenas. Concurrent with her performing career, Gorden serves as ForCulture’s founding executive director.