Donald Berman

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Pianist Donald Berman is recognized as a chief exponent of new works by living composers and overlooked music by 20th century masters, as well as for recitals that link classical and modern repertoires. His two-volume The Unknown Ives (Composers Recordings, 1999) represents the only recording of the complete short piano works of Charles Ives, and The Uncovered Ruggles (New World Records, 2005) offers premiere recordings of unpublished sketches, transcriptions, and realizations by Carl Ruggles. Recent recordings include Americans in Rome: Music by Fellows of the American Academy in Rome (Bridge, 2008) and, with Susan Narucki, The Light That Is Felt: Songs of Charles Ives (New World Records, 2008). During his fellowship, Berman will research archives at the Loeb Music Library, particularly the Nadia Boulanger Collection, for unknown, unpublished, and underperformed scores composed between 1910 and 1960. In conjunction with his work on Ives, Berman will consider less-celebrated composers within their cultural contexts. Berman’s recent concerts include When Brahma Sleeps, presented at Le Poisson Rouge in New York City, and premieres of Christopher Theofanidis’s Piano Concerto with orchestras in the United States and abroad. He teaches at Tufts University; codirects the New England Conservatory Summer Piano Institute; and is treasurer of the Charles Ives Society and on the executive board of Art of the States. He received the 2010 Classical Recording Foundation’s Samuel Sanders Collaborative Artist Award. A prizewinner of the 1991 Schubert International Competition, Berman studied with Leonard Shure, John Kirkpatrick, George Barth, and Mildred Victor.