..
Described as an eclectic with wide open ears, Derek Bermel has been widely hailed for his creativity and theatricality as a composer and his virtuosity as a performer. Known for drawing freely from several music genres including classical, jazz, pop, rock, blues, and gospel, he incubates the sounds of the world into his own musical palette creating a singular artistic vision. From the complex Bulgarian melodies in Tied Shifts commissioned by eighth blackbird, to Irish bagpipes coupled by Led Zepplin riffs in Voices, Bermel spices up his music with international beats and innumerable folk traditions while maintaining his sophisticated orchestration and charisma.
As a new-music composer, Bermel currently serves as the 2006-2009 Music Alive Composer-in-Residence of the American Composers Orchestra in which he curates its ongoing Orchestra Underground: Composers Out Front series. Upcoming 2006-2007 projects include a world premiere of The Migration Series to be performed by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and his Thracian Echoes to be performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project as part of its 10th Anniversary season opening. His commissions have included those from the National, St. Louis, Albany, and New Jersey Symphonies, Westchester Philharmonic, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Fabermusic, WNYC, De Ereprijs (Netherlands), Jazz Xchange (U.K.), pianist Christopher Taylor, and cellist Fred Sherry. His premiere CD of chamber music, Soul Garden, was released last season to critical acclaim. Soul Garden is a superb album of consistently winning chamber works that demonstrate how a brilliant musical vagabond... (Sequenza 21)
As clarinetist, he has appeared throughout the U.S. and Europe, including recitals in New York, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Detroit, Jerusalem, The Hague, and Paris, and radio broadcasts on both sides of the Atlantic. He has premiered dozens of new works, including his clarinet concerto, Voices, which created a sensation when it premiered at Carnegie Hall and has since performed with the BBC Symphony, and Boston Modern Orchestra Project. In 2007, he will serve as guest artist performing John Adams Gnarly Buttons with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Bermel is the founding clarinetist of Music from Copland House and co-founder, music director, and co-artistic director of the Dutch-American interdisciplinary ensemble TONK. In addition, he rocks it with his Brooklyn-based band PEACE BY PIECE as band leader/singer/songwriter. His theatre collaboration Golden Motors with librettist Wendy S. Walters is an opera/musical produced by Music Theatre Group. His many awards include the Rome Prize, Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships, awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Fabermusic, and residencies at Tanglewood, Banff, Yaddo, Civitella Ranieri, and Aspen. To learn more about Derek Bermel, visit derekbermel.com .
NEW CD AVAILABLE NOW!!!
"Voices" is a compliation of three orchestra works and one solo piece by Derek Bermel. Seductively called his "spectral potion", "Elixir" reflects Bermel's influences as varied as John Lennon, Charles Ives, and the Isley Brothers. "Thracian Echoes" embraces the soulful harmonies of traditional Bulgarian melodies whereas "Dust Dances" is a translation of an African gyil music session into orchestra idioms. In “Voicesâ€, Bermel himself performs the brilliantly written concerto for clarinet with impressive virtuosity. Thanks to the infections charisma of Gil Rose and his musicians, this recording brings to life the eclecticism and verve that defines the music of Derek Bermel.
SOUL GARDEN- collection of chamber works
Derek Bermel can make instruments sing. He can make them talk. Laugh. Scream. Sigh. A composer who is also a first-rate clarinetist, Bermel has an exquisite ability to capture the spirit of the human voice in his music.
Equally at ease in a New York City nightclub or a dusty village in West Africa and with akin enthusiasm for rap, Messaien, klezmer or Monk, Bermel is comfortable with any manifestation of the human soul. This naturalness in embracing our variegated humanity is perhaps what enables him to write such compelling music—music in which "each note counts," as New York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini wrote of a Bermel piece.
Performed by Bermel on the clarinet, along with cellist Fred Sherry, pianist Christopher Taylor, the Borromeo String Quartet, violist Paul Neubauer and others, and elegantly recorded by producer Judy Sherman, these eight works present, for the first time, an overview of Bermel’s small-ensemble writing. Soul Garden is an album of consistently engaging chamber works—clean, smart and unique music. Bermel’s is a garden in which to linger.
