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Donald Berman

Pianist Donald Berman absorbed the music of Charles Ives and Carl Ruggles from a teacher who championed those composers early and knew their works exhaustively. A leading specialist in the music of the 20th and 21st centuries, Berman is also active as an educator and as a vocal accompanist. Born in the early '60s, Berman grew up in White Plains, New York. His teacher there was Mildred Victor, a student of Artur Schnabel. Berman attended Wesleyan University, where he studied with George Barth; he graduated in 1984. From 1983 to 1986, Berman studied privately with John Kirkpatrick, who had given the premiere of Ives' Piano Sonata No. 2 ("Concord, Massachusetts") and also often played the works of Ruggles. Berman was one of the last students of Kirkpatrick, who had studied with Nadia Boulanger in France. He went on for a master's degree at the New England Conservatory, working with Leonard Shure, who had also worked with Schnabel as an assistant. In 1991, Berman won the Schubert International Competition in Dortmund, Germany. Berman has concertized around the U.S., Europe, and Israel and has been in special demand for master classes in all these places. His recitals often strive to link classical and modern repertory. Berman recorded for the CRI, New World, Bridge, and Centaur labels in the first part of his career. He has been especially widely recognized for the albums The Unknown Ives (1999), The Unknown Ives, Vol. 2 (2004), and The Uncovered Ruggles (2005), all of which contained newly uncovered works by their respective composers. Berman has also recorded music by contemporary composers Aaron Jay Kernis, Tamar Diesendruck, and Arthur Levering, among others. In 2008, he backed soprano Susan Narucki on The Light That Is Felt: Songs of Charles Ives. He returned in 2016 with Scott Wheeler: Portraits & Tributes - Works for Piano in 2016. Berman teaches at the Longy School of Music at Bard College, where he has served as department chair, and at Tufts University. In 2019, he appeared on the Boston Modern Orchestra Project album George Perle: Serenades, and he returned in 2023, backing Narucki on This Island.
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Discography

11 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller

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