- This event has passed.
An opportunity to learn about and experience the creative process of a living composer. These distinguished artists will discuss aspects of their music and inspirations and then accept questions from the audience.
The Festival’s composer-in-residence Derek Bermel is also the Artistic Director of the American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. His awards include the Alpert Award in the Arts, the Rome Prize, Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships, and the American Music Center’s Trailblazer Award.
Described by the Toronto Star as an “eclectic with wide open ears,” Grammy-nominated composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel has been widely hailed for his creativity, theatricality, and virtuosity. Bermel’s works draw from a rich variety of musical genres, including classical, jazz, pop, rock, blues, folk, and gospel. His direct experience with music of cultures around the world has become part of the fabric and force of his compositional language.
Recent premieres include Canzonas Americanas, commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Migration Series, commissioned by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and ACO; The Good Life for chorus and orchestra, commissioned and premiered by the Pittsburgh Symphony conducted by Leonard Slatkin; and A Shout, a Whisper, and a Trace, a Koussevitzky Commission for ACO. “Voices,” the 2009 CD of his orchestral works on BMOP/Sound, was nominated for a 2010 Grammy.
Bermel holds B.A. and D.M.A. degrees from Yale University and the University of Michigan. His main composition teachers were William Albright, Louis Andriessen, William Bolcom, Henri Dutilleux, André Hajdu, and Michael Tenzer. He studied ethnomusicology with André Hajdu, Thracian folk style with Nikola Iliev, caxixi with Julio Góes, and Lobi xylophone with Ngmen Baaru. His music is published by Peermusic Classical, represented by Faber Music in Europe and Australia.