[2] The New York Philharmonic under Dimitri Mitropoulos gave his career a promising start as a prize-winning young composer at Carnegie Hall in 1957.
[6] The competition, whose laureates include many of the most successful post-war American composers of classical music such as Peter Mennin (1945) Ned Rorem (1948) and George Rochberg (1953), was judged by notable composers including Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Morton Gould, Gian-Carlo Menotti and awarded a Carnegie Hall premiere with a one-thousand dollar prize.
A 1959 Fulbright Fellowship and two stipends from the Reemtsma Begabtenförderungswerk financed composition studies with Philipp Jarnach at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, Germany.
Out of frustration with his job, dispatching heavy boxes of sheet music orders that were mostly Elvis Presley's songs, he defaced a poster with red paint and profanity.
Sherwood's German girlfriend Ruth, pleaded to the judge for sympathy in consideration of their financial situation and his musical talent, for which she provided a copy of the N.Y. Philharmonic program as proof, and he was let go.
Years later, he found himself stranded and destitute in Paris, where he wrote music in a café while living in a small hotel room and begging on the streets.
[13] He recorded the details of this and other events documenting his inspiration, suffering and theoretical ideas in a 2000-page autobiography, which he wrote after the broadcast of "Der Bettler von Paris".
[2] As he aged, a network of friends made up of journalists, musicians and artists arranged for him to live in the community of Herzogsägmühle, near Peiting, Germany, where he continued composing.
[22] "Memories of Waters", an oratorio in classical crossover style about the River Danube was co-written with the German world music band Dissidenten.
In his testament, Gordon Sherwood entrusted his musical legacy to the Russian-born pianist Masha Dimitrieva, to whom he dedicated his piano concerto, one of the rare compositions of his published on CD during his lifetime by Classic Produktion Osnabrück.
At present Masha Dimitrieva is carrying out on her own label “sonus eterna” the complete edition of Sherwood's piano solo works as well, together with the German soprano Felicitas Breest, of his songs.