Derek Bermel

Derek Bermel (born 1967, in New York City) is an American composer, clarinetist and conductor whose music blends various facets of world music, funk and jazz with largely classical performing forces and musical vocabulary. He is the recipient of various awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the American Academy in Rome’s Rome Prize awarded to artists for a year-long residency in Rome. Life Bermel earned his B.A. at Yale University and later studied at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor with William Bolcom and William Albright. He also studied with Louis Andriessen in Amsterdam and Henri Dutilleux at Tanglewood. Later, his interest in a wide range of musical cultures sent him to Jerusalem to study ethnomusicology with André Hajdu, Bulgaria to investigate Thracian folk style with Nikola Iliev, Brazil to learn caxixi with Julio Góes, and to Ghana to study Lobi xylophone with Ngmen Baaru. Bermel’s output includes pieces for a variety of performing forces, including solo vocal songs, pieces for large and small chamber ensembles, and fourteen orchestral works. Though the ensembles he writes for are largely classical, his voice as a composer has been heavily influenced by both h