TONK

Still in his 30's, DEREK BERMEL has been hailed by colleagues, critics, and audiences across the globe for his creativity and theatricality as a composer of chamber, symphonic, dance, theater, and pop works, and his versatility and virtuosity as a clarinetist, conductor, and jazz and rock musician.

As a composer, Bermel has received many of today's most important awards, including the Rome Prize, Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellowships, an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Millennium Prize from Faber Music (UK), and residencies at the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, Tanglewood, Aspen, Bowdoin, Banff, Yaddo, Sacatar, and Civitella Ranieri. His music is published by Peermusic Classical (US) and Faber Music (UK).

Bermel's hands-on experience with music of cultures around the world has become part of the fabric and force of his compositional language. He studied ethnomusicology and orchestration in Jerusalem, and later traveled to Bulgaria to study the Thracian folk style, Dublin to study uillean pipes, and Ghana to study the Lobi xylophone.

As an educator, Bermel is the founding director of the Making Score program of the New York Youth Symphony, a seminar of 25 young composers which meets once a month at ASCAP with guest lecturers ranging from Meredith Monk to Steve Reich, Vijay Iyer, Wycliffe Gordon, Ellen Taafe Zwilich, and Stephen Sondheim.

In June 2006 - along with composers Frederick Rzewski and George Tsontakis - he will be a guest composer at Music 06, leading workshops and masterclasses with student composers at the University of Cincinnati.

He has led master classes and held residencies throughout the U.S. and abroad at schools including Yale University, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), Longy School of Music, Peabody School of Music, Columbia University, Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, RISDI, Rotterdam Conservatorium (Netherlands), University of Western Michigan (Kalamazoo), University of Chicago, Universita Federal da Bahia (Brazil), University of Texas (Austin), UCLA, University of North Carolina (Greensboro), Eastern Carolina University, Central Michigan University, Northwestern University, Aspen School of Music, Bowdoin Festival of Music, Duquesne University, and the Tanglewood Music Center.

Soul Garden, the first disc of his chamber music, was released in 2002 on CRI records (now New World Records) to much acclaim. A second disc, by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, featuring four orchestral works, is due to be released in 2007.

In Spring 2006 the Philharmonia (London) will perform an all-Bermel concert as part of their Music of Today series. In addition, his music has been performed at festivals internationally, including De Suite Muziekweek (Amsterdam), Imagine (Memphis), Cactus Pear (San Antonio), Gaudeamus (Amsterdam), Society of Composers, Inc. National Conference (Iowa), Society for New Music (NY), Bowling Green (Ohio), Focus! (NY), Interlochen (Michigan), Huddersfield (U.K.), Thunderclaps (Den Haag), and Banff (Alberta).

Currently collaborating on a musical Loving Family with librettist Wendy S. Walters, produced by Music Theatre Group, Bermel's other recent collaborations include those with playwright Will Eno (Fetch), choreographer Sheron Wray (Messengers and Identity with Resistance), poet Naomi Shihab Nye (Dog), and filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson (Spicebush, Special Man).

Bermel is co-artistic director of the Dutch-American interdisciplinary ensemble TONK, which he founded along with electric guitarist Wiek Hijmans and poet Wendy Walters.

Recent commissions include those by the National Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, WNYC Radio, Westchester Philharmonic, Aspen Music Festival, Pacific Symphony, Gilmore Festival, Eighth Blackbird/Greenwall Foundation, Fromm Foundation, Flute/Clarinet Duo Consortium, Fabermusic Millennium Series, Tanglewood Music Center, American Composers Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival, Albany Symphony/Meet the Composer, De Ereprijs (Netherlands), Birmingham Royal Ballet (U.K.), Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Stony Brook Contemporary Chamber Players, New York International Fringe Festival, TONK, Jazz Xchange (U.K.), pianists Christopher Taylor and Andy Russo, organist William Albright, baritone Timothy Jones, cellist Fred Sherry, and the New York Youth Symphony.

Bermel's clarinet playing has been hailed by the New York Times as "brilliant" and "first rate". He premiered his own critically acclaimed clarinet concerto, Voices, with the American Composers Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, and revisited it with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, the BBC Symphony in London, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic (John Adams conducting).

Well-versed in the classical and jazz repertoire on clarinet and piano, he trained at Yale University and the University of Michigan, studying clarinet with Ben Armato of the Metropolitan Opera and Fred Ormand at the University of Michigan. He studied composition at Michigan with William Albright and William Bolcom, and later with Henri Dutilleux and Louis Andriessen.

Bermel is the founding clarinetist of Music from Copland House, a creative center for American Music. He has premiered dozens of new works for clarinet in appearances as soloist throughout the U.S. and Europe, including recitals in New York, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Detroit, Jerusalem, The Hague, and Paris, and radio broadcasts on the BBC (London), NCRV (Amsterdam), and WQXR (New York).

Other recent concerto appearances include Bolcom's Concerto for Clarinet with the Lexington (KY) Philharmonic and the Greensboro (NC) Symphony, André Hajdu's klezmer concerto Jewish Rhapsody with the Westchester Philharmonic (NY), and the Copland Concerto at the Crested Butte Music Festival (CO). In January 2007 He will perform John Adams' concerto Gnarly Buttons with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with the composer conducting.

Bermel was the recipient of one of three Ford Foundation Conducting Awards, leading the Cleveland Chamber Symphony in his Continental Divide and Edward Miller's Cascades.

He recently led the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble in a program including two of his own works, conducted his orchestral work, Dust Dances, at Interlochen Academy and with the Pacific Youth Symphony, and directed the premiere of his Three Rivers at the Kitchen in New York City.

He also toured with the British dance company Jazz Xchange, conducting and performing in his composition "Messengers," a collaboration with choreographer Sheron Wray; he conducted his score for two Brecht plays, "Caucasian Chalk Circle" and "Drums in the Night" at the International Fringe Festival in New York, and in Banff he led the premiere of his "West African Folk Songs."

Over the years he has served as music director, conductor, and arranger for several jazz choirs, including The Baker's Dozen at Yale University, Parallel Motion at the University of Michigan, Mash'hu K'mo ha'Blues in Jerusalem, and The Toast of Hell's Kitchen in New York City.

His Brooklyn-based band, Peace by Piece, featuring singer-songwriter Bermel on keyboards and caxixi, Bobby Roe on bass, Steve Altenberg on drums, and Ryan Scott on guitar has performed to capacity crowds at many of the top clubs in New York, including Joe's Pub, the BAMcafé, Southpaw, and the Cutting Room.

The band has been featured on WNYC's New Sounds and on NPR's Weekend Edition. Peace by Piece has released two albums on Miscellaneous Records: their first, self-titled album in 2000, and most recently The Elements in 2004.