As clarinettist and composer alike, Derek Bermel is a product
of the contemporary accessibility of, and fascination with, the
diverse musics of the world. Gone are the days when the Austro-Hungarian,
or even the wider European, traditions could constitute any kind
of workable definition of ‘serious’ music. Just as, once upon
a time, European literature woke up to – and creatively embraced
– literatures far beyond the previously monolithic Latin and Greek
tradition, so Western music has widened its horizons enormously.
There is no doubting
Bermel’s qualifications as a classical musician in the older,
more limited sense of the phrase. He has degrees from Yale
and the University of Michigan; he studied composition with,
amongst others, William Albright, Henri Dutilleux, William
Bolcom and Louis Andriessen, before spending time in Jerusalem
studying ethnomusicology and orchestration with André Hajdu.
Other formative musical experiences have included six months
in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, studying Thracian folk music with Nikola
Iliev; four months in Ghana learning the gyil, the Lobi
xylophone, with Ngmen Baaru , a period in Dublin studying
the uillean pipes and a spell in Brazil with Julio Góes,
learning to play the caxixi, As a performer Bermel has played
concertos by Bolcom, Copland and John Adams, inter alia, with
orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the BBC
Symphony Orchestra. He has also played alongside Wynton Marsalis
and with his own band, Peace by Piece, playing keyboards and
caxixi, with Bobby Roe on bass, Steve Altenberg on drums,
and Ryan Scott on guitar. His musical range, in short, is
remarkable. What is even more remarkable is that in his compositions
he generally manages to make something cohesive out of this
wealth of musical materials and experiences.
The
present CD presents four orchestral works. The most striking
– and the one which features Bermel as both performer and
composer – is Voices, effectively a concerto for clarinet.
This was premiered with the American Composers Orchestra (conducted
by Tan Dun) in May of 1998 at Carnegie Hall; later performances
have included ones with the Albany Symphony Orchestra and
the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (as on this recording).
Its title refers, I take it, both to the presence in the work
of several different musical ‘voices’ and also to its exploration
of techniques of vocalisation in instrumental playing, the
instrumental representation of the human voice . In three
movements, it begins, (in a movement entitled ‘Id’) with allusions
to the ‘vocal’ dialogues of Eric Dolphy and Charles Mingus
on pieces such as ‘What Love’ and ‘Starting’ and, more broadly,
to the often richly vocalised playing of Dolphy and others
in the jazz tradition. Bermel’s own playing here is stylish,
convincing in a range of idioms and wittily humorous. As ‘Id’
develops, all the sections of the orchestra produce vocalic
effects, through string portamenti, woodwind glissandi, brass
mutes and an electric guitar with a wa-wa pedal. In the second
movement, ‘She Moved Thru the Fair’, which is slower and more
lyrical, Bermel’s familiarity with Irish music is evident,
with a fairly lavish orchestral background over which Bermel’s
clarinet rides, often with a distinctively Celtic ‘keening’
sound. In the final movement, ‘Jamm on Toast’, the vocalisations
of big-band, funk and rock are more to the fore, with growling
brass and lots of vibrato, the music driven along by the percussionist’s
cymbal. In the solo part Bermel draws extensively, and idiomatically,
on a range of Afro-American traditions, from soul and rhythm
and blues to Free Jazz. Voices is exciting, physical music,
but it is also intelligent and thought-provoking. Like other
works on this disc, it has an inner coherence and authority
that persuades one that what might seem like merely playful
eclecticism is actually the result of a composer being true
to his own musical self.
To
take the other works chronologically in order of composition
(which is also the order in which they are presented here),
Dust Dances re-conceives the music of the Ghanaian gyil in
terms of a western orchestra, redeploying genuine funeral
songs and recreational music, with some busy and rhythmically
complex writing and some interesting use of piano and harpsichord
as well as woodwinds, strings and percussion. Bermel makes
use of a pentatonic scale and some insistently motoric patterns
of repetition and in the process we get reminders of minimalism
and Stravinsky too. It is Bermel’s familiarity with Bulgarian
folk music that informs Thracian Echoes, a piece which responds
both to the often melancholic strains of Bulgarian choral
song and the insistently energetic rhythms of the instrumental
music of the area. The interweaving of melodic fragments,
the patterns of echo, of incremental repetition and cross-referencing
make for a rich musical dish. As with Dust Dances, one feels
that Bermel has understood and reworked things which are at
the heart of these non-western traditions rather than merely
undertaken a tourist-like act of appropriation.
At
the centre of Elixir are the strings, the harp and the theremin.
The woodwinds function largely as voices of musical commentary.
Some of the writing seems influenced by Bermel’s knowledge
of French music, not least that of the spectral music of composers
such as Grisey and Murail. But, in a manner characteristic
of Bermel, such influences are fused with very different ones
– after a haunting opening which slowly grows in volume and
phrase length, the theremin becomes a leading voice, in music
which more than once reminds one of Messiaen and, indeed,
of Takemitsu. Bermel himself speaks of Cassandra Wilson and
John Lennon as other influences on the piece, but their presences
have so far escaped me.
Not
everyone will feel comfortable with such creatively eclectic
music-making. But no one who hears this CD will, surely, be
left in any doubt as regards either Bermel’s consummate musicianship
or the excellence of the work of the Boston Modern Orchestra
Project under the baton of Gil Rose. The recorded sound is
top class too.
Glyn Pursglove
Derek Bermel
(clarinet) 
