Bermel - Four Homages

Derek Bermel

Four Homages for piano

Grammy-nominated composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel, “one of the most original voices of American music” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram), has been widely hailed for his creativity, theatricality, and virtuosity. Bermel studied ethnomusicology and orchestration with Andre Hajdu in Jerusalem; he later traveled to Bulgaria to study the Thracian folk style, to Ghana to learn the Lobi xylophone, and to Brazil to study caxixi.

This engagement with other musical cultures has become part of the fabric and force of his compositional language, in which the human voice and its myriad inflections play a primary role.

Bermel’s commissioners have included the Pittsburgh, National, Boston, Saint Louis, New Jersey, and Pacific Symphonies, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, WNYC Radio, eighth blackbird, the Guarneri and JACK String Quartets, Music from China, Copland House, violinist Midori, electric guitarist Wiek Hijmans, Schoenberg Ensemble/Veenfabriek (Netherlands), Jazz Xchange (U.K.), and Figura (Denmark).

Bermel has worked for many years as an artistic advisor to the American Composers Orchestra, and has enjoyed multi-year residencies at the Institute for Advanced Study and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. An innovative educator, Bermel was the Founding Director of the New York Youth Symphony’s Composition (formerly Making Score) program. He is Institute Director of Copland House’s CULTIVATE program for emerging composers, and also mentors young composers in the American Composers Orchestra’s Underwood Readings, Playing it Unsafe, and CoLABoratory programs.

Bermel’s discography features three critically-acclaimed discs: an all-Bermel orchestral recording that includes his clarinet concerto Voices (BMOP/sound); “Soul Garden,” a disc of his small ensemble/solo music (New World/CRI); and “Canzonas Americanas,” with Alarm Will Sound (Cantaloupe). Bermel is the founding clarinetist of the chamber ensemble Music From Copland House.

Among Bermel’s many awards are the Alpert Award in the Arts, Rome Prize, Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships, the Trailblazer Award of the American Music Center, and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; commissions from the Koussevitzky and Fromm Foundations; and residencies at Yaddo, Aspen, Banff, Tanglewood, Bellagio, Copland House, Sacatar (Brazil), and Civitella Ranieri (Italy).

Bermel holds B.A. and D.M.A. degrees from Yale University and the University of Michigan. Notable among his composition teachers are William Albright, Louis Andriessen, William Bolcom, Henri Dutilleux, Andre Hajdu, and Michael Tenzer.

Commissioned by the Friends of Today’s Music program of the Music Teachers’ Association of California

I. Hungarian Salsa (homage to Ligeti)……………………………………….. 2 II. La machine infernale (homage to Stravinsky)……………………………..6 III. Appoggiatura (homage to Scriabin)…………………………………….... 8 IV. Instant of Blues (homage to Nancarrow)…………………………………10

III. Appoggiatura (homage to Scriabin)