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COMPOSITIONS
GENERAL: "This composer is an absorber of worlds, drawing on the sighs and moans of jazz or soul; the ornamental inflections that pepper Bulgarian folk songs and Irish ballads; the dancing, buzzing modalisms of the gyil, a West African xylophone. He is a singular transformer of his source materials, a writer of memorable melodies and a virtuoso clarinetist, as well." - SAN JOSE MERCURY
"Composer Derek Bermel may not be a household name yet, but if there is any justice in the music world, he soon will be."
- CHICAGO TRIBUNE
"With a background in jazz and rock as well as classical music, the New York-based Bermel is an eclectic with wide-open ears."
- TORONTO STAR
"The American composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel recalls the much earlier model of virtuosos such as Rachmaninoff and Kreisler"
- NEW YORK NEWSDAY
"Derek Bermel's diverse output shows just how many types of music can impact on a contemporary musician, from classical to jazz, from R&B to hip-hop, as well as innumerable folk traditions."
- THE GUARDIAN (U.K.)
"'Soul Garden' is a superb album of consistently winning chamber works that demonstrate how a brilliant musical vagabond has made the sounds of the world his palette to create a singular artistic vision."
- SEQUENZA 21
"[Derek Bermel is] a composer who thinks deeply about where music comes from, how it is made and what it is for."
- SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
REVIEWS OF SPECIFIC COMPOSITIONS:
Elixir (2006) for orchestra
"Derek Bermel's Elixir marked the beginning of his three-year tenure as ACO's composer-in-residence. Bermel is a musician of almost incredible breadth and productivity a virtuoso clarinetist and apparent stylistic packrat who remembers and incubates everything he hears. While Elixir is informed by the shimmering spectral music that flourished in France in the 1970s, it also sounds distinctively American and decidedly maritime, with shore sounds and a constant rocking that outdoes Debussy's En Bateau in its motility."
Voices (1997) concerto for clarinet and orchestra
"Derek Bermel's "Voices", a concerto for clarinet, with the composer playing the solo part brilliantly, was fun, music with brash humor, clever scoring, evocations of elegiac Irish bagpipes in the slow movement, and Led Zeppelin in the finale."
- NEW YORK TIMES
"Derek Bermel's "Voices," a concerto for clarinet and orchestra, is a crowd-pleaser that is likely to enter the repertory of every orchestra that had a representative in the audience. Part of the appeal lies in the virtuosity and charisma of the composer, who was soloist. There doesn't seem to be anything Bermel can't do with the clarinet; but the appeal also lies in the music, which adds dimensions of wit and intelligence to melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic elements of immediate popular appeal. This is the kind of piece that makes your day."
- BOSTON GLOBE
Thracian Echoes (2002) for orchestra
"A world premiere work ["Thracian Echoes"] destined to lead a long, illustrious life. [Bermel] has lived in these Bulgarian rhythms and melodies, woven them far into the complex texture of his composition. Bermel's sophisticated orchestration and meticulous part-writing made every stage direction and sound effect a vital part of this highly evocative, but never-once-incidental work. He created a powerful work of art that speaks a language all its own and is built-to last."
- THE JOURNAL NEWS (NY)
Soul Garden (2000) for viola solo and string quintet
American composer Derek Bermel's "Soul Garden," a 2000 work for solo viola and string quintet, represents the confluence of two mainstreams the romantic-modern waters that originated in Europe and the blues-jazz-gospel waters that flowed from African American communities. The most striking and pervasive effect in the piece is the use of sliding notes, or quarter-tones, to emulate the vocal inflections of African American music. But "effect" isn't quite the right term because these inflections are not separable, conceptually or compositionally, from the core musical ideas Bermel's highly complex but fully controlled approach to harmony and rhythmic structure&.nearly every moment is both appealing and challenging, familiar and strange. It is music by a composer who thinks deeply about where music comes from, how it is made and what it is for.
- SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
Like many of his pieces, this essay for solo viola and a string quintet (a quartet with an extra cello, in this configuration) draws freely from several musical worlds. The music's surfaces are painted in the coloration of blues and gospel.&The work's underpinnings, though, use rhythmic and harmonic techniques more germane to contemporary concert music, and the tensions between those languages give the music its poignancy. The bluesy turns of the solo viola line, played with a warm tone and an almost vocal inflection by Paul Neubauer, suggest a simple, direct approach to tonality. Yet the quartet writing, with its hazy, tonally ambiguous shimmer, pulls in the opposite direction.
- NEW YORK TIMES
"Even more striking was Soul Garden for viola and string quintet, whose origins lie in African-American gospel music. With soloist Rachel Roberts emulating the vocalism of an alto gospel singer answered by the church baritone represented by an ensemble cellist, the result lies in the tradition of Aaron Copland's popular Americana in its immediacy and sense of respectful parody."
- THE GUARDIAN (U.K.)
Natural Selection (2000) for medium voice and large ensemble
"Composer Derek Bermel may not be a household name yet, but if there is any justice in the music world, he soon will be. His "Natural Selection," a song cycle based on poetry of Wendy S. Walters and Naomi Shihab Nye, is a group of animal portraits that achieves a dramatic complexity that belies its commonplace subject. Baritone Timothy Jones was extraordinary."
- CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Three Rivers (2001) for ensemble includes improvisation
"'Three Rivers" by Derek Bermel, a new-music composer who has dipped into rock and African music, finessed the distinction between big band and chamber ensemble. As the themes overlapped, grappled, fused and pulled apart, the earthy beat and angular melodies made the music swagger like a more abstract "West Side Story.'"
- NEW YORK TIMES
The Ends (2002) for orchestra
"["The Ends"] was cute, funny and brilliantly orchestrated -- the longest, most elaborate bowing out in music after Beethoven's Fifth."
- WASHINGTON POST
Dust Dances (1994) for orchestra
"The bold, brisk composition ["Dust Dances"], based on the marimba-like gyil music of Ghana, was an invigorating, percussive delight. And for all its microtonal passages and motoric, Minimalist phrasing, it had refreshing charm."
- COMMERCIAL APPEAL (Memphis)
Slides (2003) for orchestra
"The 15-minute work, which provokes many a smile with its humorous whimsy, is like a Jackson Pollock painting, where random splotches of color become, in their anti-organization, a kind of form in itself."
- NEWARK STAR-LEDGER
Coming Together (1999) for clarinet and violoncello
Meighan Stoops was clearly having a fantastic evening, particularly in Derek Bermel's unusual Coming Together (no relation to the Rzewski). She and cellist André Emelianoff brought the piece to life with precision that had me chuckling. Constructed mostly of short, sighing glissandi, the piece had Stoops clarinet in an almost sexual rapport with Emelianoff's cello. Bermel, like many of the composers on this program, is clearly fascinated by jazz, and this work benefited from its interpreters clearly feeling the same. David DeSantis Make it Stop, an entertaining exercise in obsessive figures for the clarinet set against an equally intense piano part, also showed Stoops and McMillen at their riveting best in the works pulsing colors.
- MUSICWEB.(UK)
[Coming Together is] a piece which is at times (surely intentionally) laugh-out-loud humorous, it is difficult to conceive this as anything other than a 'tour de force' of performance art, where the gestural vocabulary is write large in a musical equivalent of slapstick&.
- TEMPO (UK)
Theme and Absurdities (1993) for clarinet solo
The 32-year-old American composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel recalls the much earlier model of virtuosos such as Rachmaninoff and Kreisler, who kept themselves supplied with flattering showpieces. Bermel's "Theme and Absurdities" is a short, dizzying clarinet solo that spins off into fanciful pyrotechnics, weaving in bits of cartoon grotesquerie, angular modernist gestures, Benny Goodman swoops, baroque filigree, drunken glissandos, klezmer riffs, operatic high notes and theatrical dialogues between the high register and the low. The whole thing ends with a note of humor and hope, trailing off with the sunrise opening of Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra.
- NEW YORK NEWSDAY
Tag Rag (2003) for chamber orchestra
"The snappy, pop inspired "Tag Rag" was good fun, full of merry percussion effects and playing around with a short riff that the composer lifted from an Amsterdam street musician."
- LOS ANGELES TIMES
Continental Divide (1996) for large ensemble
De jury prees "Continental Divide" van Derek Bermel al l'veel-belovend'....Bermel studeerde hoorbaar bij Louis Andriessen en houdt van een swingende puls, zijn flink bezette compositie verloopt steeds brutaler en abrupter." ["The jury praised "Continental Divide" by Derek Bermel as 'forward-looking....Bermel studied composition with Louis Andriessen, and prefers a swinging pulse. His broadly orchestrated work is bold and striking."]
- NRC HANDELSBLAND (Amsterdam)
"Guest conductor Derek Bermel presided over appealing works in a number of styles. Bermel's "Continental Divide" makes no claims to monumentalism, instead shooting musical accents off long notes and exuding jazzy energy. Hints of lyricism peek through the textures, as do passages of gleeful cacophony. The composer led a crisp account of his inviting nine-minute piece."
- CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER
At the End of the World (2003) for soprano and large ensemble
"Bermel showed great accomplishment in setting voice with orchestra ["At the End of the World"], and drew marvelous effects from the players."
- METROLAND (Albany, NY)
Tied Shifts (2004) for mixed sextet
With a background in jazz and rock as well as classical music, the New York-based Bermel is an eclectic with wide-open ears. The first movement of his two-movement opus began with violin and cello playing the same phrases over and over but that deceptively simple beginning developed into a fast and energetic interplay of all six players, the music developing an engaging rhythm&Influenced at least in part by the minimalists, Bermel doesn't resist giving his music a sequential logic that makes it easy to follow. But Tied Shifts turned out to be anything but slavishly predictable, with its second movement incorporating hymn-like material and echoes of Bulgarian folk music.
- TORONTO STAR
Derek Bermel's ``Tied Shifts,' pulsed its way through the Balkans, chock full of ungainly difficult clarinet runs, raw fiddling and crazy stop-time rhythms, songs growing out of embellishments, which grew into more songs. It all ended with a tolling hymn, part rock song, part Beethovian exaltation.
- SAN JOSE MERCURY-NEWS
The attraction of Derek Bermel's lively, harmonically alluring "Tied Shifts" (2004) was its rhythmic irregularity, inspired by the composer's study of Bulgarian folk music, in which ties across bar lines give the impression of irregular meters.
- NEW YORK TIMES
"Opening the program was Derek Bermel's 2004 work, "Tied Shifts." a fabulously multilayered piece commissioned by eighth blackbird and driven by the complex folk rhythms the composer explored in the wake of a trip to Bulgaria. The staggeringly difficult work was full of ingenious "conversations"."
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
Various songs (1993-2000) for voice and piano
"Bermel set the texts inventively ["Nature Calls" / "Three Songs on Poems by Wendy S. Walters"]. Vocal lines moved effortlessly from song to speech to halfway between. The scores even seemed to ask for the dramatic movement and gestures that Timothy Jones used to make his performances almost magical."
- HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Mulatash Stomp (1991) for violin, clarinet, and piano
Hungary is at the heart of 'Mulatash Stomp' for violin, clarinet, and piano&The 'mulatas' is an all-night Hungarian party, and to bring some American influence to the piece Bermel adds a techno rhythm. Clearly Mozart is also a guest, for a theme from the 'Jupiter' symphony makes much of the running as the piece goes on.
- TEMPO (UK)
Language Instruction (2003) for violin, violoncello, clarinet, and piano
"The centerpiece was Derek Bermel's 'Language Instruction' (2003), an amusing full ensemble work based on the rhythms and gestures of language tapes. The clarinet was, in effect, the voice on the tape, and the other instruments were the students -- variously willing or difficult, competent or bumbling -- who must repeat the phrases. Mr. Bermel spins this interaction into an increasingly chaotic fantasy that would have been perfectly at home on a program with Berio's Sequenza III."
- NEW YORK TIMES
Derek Bermel is to be congratulated for making his mixed quartet Language Instruction (2003) a splendidly effective example of the theatre piece genre. The "plot," a clever send-up of classroom teaching, brims with perfectly timed humor without using dialogue nothing is obscure or overstays its welcome. Best of all, theres musical as well as dramatic logic at work here. One can imagine successfully perceiving the work on a purely aural level without visual cues.
- NEW MUSIC CONOISSEUR
Turning (1995) for piano
"The most impressive performance was of Derek Bermel's 'Turning', a marvelous set of variations on an invented Protestant-style hymn tune."
-IONARTS
Three Funk Studies (1991) for piano
Mr. Bermel's Three Funk Studies are propulsive, raw and damnably difficult: imagine Thelonious Monk crossed with Prokofiev.
- NEW YORK TIMES
MISCELLANEOUS REVIEWS
Stravinsky realised that The Rite was unrepeatable. He never wrote for such large resources again, nor did he try to recreate anything like these massive rhythmic onslaughts. But the work's most essential and radical qualities - pulsing rhythm, repetition, the use of rhythmic shape as theme, the creation of continuity through breaks, the evocation of antiquity by modern means - stayed with him right through the half century and more of his composing life to come. More than that, they are with us still. Composers in every generation since Stravinsky's - Olivier Messiaen and Elliott Carter, Steve Reich and Harrison Birtwistle, Thomas Adès and Derek Bermel - have gone on living in the long summer this spring ushered in.
- PAUL GRIFFITHS (London Symphony Orchestra website)
Derek Bermel is one of those musicians with so much talent in so many areas that he could easily be mistakenly labeled a dilletante. Afterall, he writes chamber, symphonic, dance, theater and pop works, and is a terrific clarinetist, pianist and conductor, who is just as comfortable with jazz and rock as he is with classical. But, Soul Garden, a new CD of Bermel's chamber works, demonstrates just how serious a composer Bermel is and how well he has assimilated his varied musical experiences and made then uniquely his own....Soul Garden is a superb album of consistently winning chamber works that demonstrate how a brilliant musical vagabond has made the sounds of the world his palette to create a singular artistic vision.
- SEQUENZA 21
Certains traces d'humour, j'en ai observé parfois aux Etats-Unis, notamment chez un des fellows de Tanglewood, Derek Bermel, auteur d'une pièce irrésistible pour clarinette intitulée 'Theme and Absurdities' [I have seen specific types of [musical] humor in the United States, most notably in the work of one of the Tanglewood Fellows, Derek Bermel, composer of an irresistible piece for clarinet called Theme and Absurdities.
- HENRI DUTILLEUX in Mystère et mémoire des sons , Actes sud, 1997, Paris
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