Gordon Monahan's works for piano, loudspeakers, video, kinetic sculpture, and computer-controlled sound environments span various genres from avant-garde concert music to multi-media installation and sound art. As a composer and sound artist, he juxtaposes the quantitative and qualitative aspects of natural acoustical phenomena with elements of media technology, natural environments, architecture, popular culture, and live performance. In addition to creating a significant number of sound installations and sound art performances, Monahan also composes concert music for traditional instruments. The renowned composer John Cage once said, "At the piano, Gordon Monahan produces sounds we haven't heard before."
Since 1978, Monahan has performed and exhibited at numerous performance spaces, museums, galleries, and festivals, including Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin), the Venice Biennale, the Secession (Vienna), Ultima Festival (Oslo), Hebbel Theater (Berlin), The Kitchen (NY), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Merkin Hall (NY), and Massey Hall (Toronto).
Monahan is the recipient of a 2013 Governor-General's Award in Visual and Media Arts. He won First Prize at the 1984 CBC National Radio Competition for Young Composers, as well as commissions from the Vancouver New Music Society; CBC Radio; Dade County Art in Public Places, Miami; The Kitchen, New York; the DAAD Inventionen Festival, Berlin, the Donaueschinger Musiktage, the Sony Center, Berlin, the Beethoven Foundation (bonn-hoeren), Bonn, and the London Contemporary Orchestra (UK). His controversial commission for the Dade County MetroRail transit system was banned during the 1988 New Music America festival in Miami. That same year, Monahan was chosen as CBC Radio's entry to the International Rostrum of Composers in Paris. Monahan has been Artist-in-Residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts (1990), the Exploratorium in San Francisco (1991), D.A.A.D., Berlin (1992-93), the Western Front, Vancouver (1999), Podewil, Berlin (2002), Kunsthalle Krems, Austria (2006), Museumsquartier, Vienna (2008), Warsaw Autumn, Warsaw (2010), bonn-hoeren (Beethoven Foundation), Bonn (2016) and a fellow with the New York Foundation for the Arts (1991).