|
Biography
![]() Philip Cooper
Donald Berman has been on the frontlines of new music scholarship, performance and recording for over 30 years. A pianist and scholar of exceptional gifts, he has been a Fellow at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, guest lecturer at Northeastern University, Director of New England Conservatory's Summer Piano Institute, and now serves as Keyboard Studies Chair at the Longy School of Music of Bard College, as well as president of the Charles Ives Society. As General Editor of the 3-volume Charles E. Ives: Shorter Works for Piano, Mr. Berman has collaborated with two different publishers to issue a new edition of these important works. These volumes represent 30 years of research and editing, their publication finally complete in late 2022.
Performance highlights in recent years have focused primarily on solo and chamber music repertoire, combining familiar works by such composers as Ives, Scarlatti, Fauré, Chopin, Copland, Bloch, Schubert, Poulenc, Rieger, Kagel and Schoenberg with premieres and seldom performed works by Stucky, Wyner, Chang, Theofanidis, Saariaho, McDonald, Boulez, Cage, Schoenfield, Harbison, Zare, Lieberson, Lerdahl and many others.
From 1998-2008 Mr. Berman curated an immense project which ultimately resulted in a highly praised series of four concerts of unknown and under-appreciated American music at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and a subsequent 4-CD set, Americans in Rome (BRIDGE 9271). Mr. Berman's recent CDs include piano works by Martin Boykan (BRIDGE 9434, "a wonderful recording" -New York Times; "Best of Boston" -Boston Globe); Scott Wheeler (BRIDGE 9463); George Perle (BMOP Sound 1067, "Best of 2019"-Sequenza 21); and, in one of many collaborations with soprano Susan Narucki, György Kurtág (The Edge of Silence, AVIE 2408), which is among the New York Times' "Best Classical Tracks of 2019", is also on Sequenza 21's "Best of 2019" list, and was nominated for a Grammy. Their newest recording, This Island (AVIE AV2592) was described by The GuardianMr. Berman's other recordings can be found on Naxos, ARSIS Audio, Bridge, New World, CRI, Koch, Centaur, Newport Classics, Accurate and Capstone Records.
* * * * * |