Gordon Marsh

Gordon Marsh received his B.M. in piano from the Eastman School of Music, his M.F.A. in composition from the University of California at Irvine, and his Ph.D. in composition from the University of Chicago, where he was a Century Fellow and Lecturer in Music. At Chicago, his composition teachers included John Eaton, Shulamit Ran and the late Ralph Shapey. In 1996, Dr. Marsh joined the faculty of the Fine Arts Department at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia, where he teaches theory, history, and composition, and currently serves as department chairperson. He has served as director of General Education at Roanoke College, and as director of Pedagogical Development in the college’s Goode-Pasfeld Center for Learning and Teaching. Awarded a sabbatical for 2003-2004, he spent eleven months at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, during which time he completed professional training in computer music at IRCAM. Dr. Marsh has analytical and theoretical work has focused on Mahler, Schnittke, Ligeti, Berio, Lutoslawski, Shapey, and twentieth-century aesthetics. He has collaborated on interactive media installations in the United States and France. He has produced a range of instrumental and vocal music, including chamber and solo works. Over the years, Dr. Marsh has performed as recitalist, chamber musician, concerto soloist, and conductor. Dennis Polkow of the Chicago Reader wrote, “Gordon Marsh did an absolutely spectacular job with the [Ives] Concord Sonata, bringing it off as effectively as I have heard it in performance or on record… Marsh was not only up to the most fiendish technical demands of the piece… but also managed to reveal the subtlety, poetry, and riotous humor… a memorable performance.”