Alan Bern (Bloomington, Indiana, 1955) is an American Jewish composer, pianist, accordionist, educator and cultural activist, based in Berlin since 1987. He is the founding artistic director of Yiddish Summer Weimar and the Other Music Academy (OMA). He is internationally recognized for his contributions to the research, dissemination and creative renewal of Jewish music with

Brave Old World Brave Old World is an American and German klezmer band. It formed in 1989. Members hail from the US and Germany. ''The Washington Post'' called Brave Old World "the revival's first supergroup. Every player is a virtuoso.” In 1992, the group w ...

, The Other Europeans and the Semer Ensemble, among others. He is the creator of Present-Time Composition, a musical and educational approach informed by cognitive science that integrates the methods of improvisation and composition. In 2016 he received the Weimar Prize in recognition of major cultural contributions to the city of Weimar. In 2017 he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Free State of Thuringia, and in 2022 he was awarded the

Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (german: Verdienstorden der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, or , BVO) is the only federal decoration of Germany. It is awarded for special achievements in political, economic, cultural, intellect ...

Education

Bern received a B.A. cum laude in Religious Studies from Indiana University (1976), an M.A. in Philosophy under

Daniel Dennett Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...

from Tufts University (1983) and a D.M.A in Music Composition under Joel Hoffman from the College-Conservatory of Music,

University of Cincinnati The University of Cincinnati (UC or Cincinnati) is a public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio. Founded in 1819 as Cincinnati College, it is the oldest institution of higher education in Cincinnati and has an annual enrollment of over 44,00 ...

(2006). In addition to his formal education, Bern studied classical piano with Sidney Foster,

Paul Badura-Skoda Paul Badura-Skoda (6 October 1927 – 25 September 2019) was an Austrian pianist. Career A student of Edwin Fischer, Badura-Skoda first rose to prominence by winning first prize in the Austrian Music Competition in 1947. In 1949, he perform ...

and

Leonard Shure Leonard Shure (April 10, 1910 in Los Angeles – February 28, 1995 in Nantucket, Massachusetts) was an American concert pianist. He began his career as a performer at the age of 5 and as a teenager studied privately with Artur Schnabel in Germ ...

and chamber music with

Josef Gingold Josef Gingold (; January 11, 1995) was a Russian-born American classical violinist and teacher who lived most of his life in the United States. At the time of his death he was considered one of the most influential violin masters in the United St ...

and György Sebök. He studied jazz with David Baker at

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universit ...

and Improvisation with

Ran Blake Ran Blake (born April 20, 1935) is an American pianist, composer, and educator. He is known for his unique style that combines blues, gospel, classical, and film noir influences into an innovative and dark jazz sound. His career spans over 40 rec ...

at the

New England Conservatory The New England Conservatory of Music (NEC) is a private music school in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the oldest independent music conservatory in the United States and among the most prestigious in the world. The conservatory is located on Hu ...

. At the

Creative Music Studio The Creative Music Studio (CMS) was a premier study center for contemporary creative music during the 1970s and 1980s, based in Woodstock, New York. Founded in 1971 by Karl Berger, Ingrid Sertso, and Ornette Coleman, it brought together leading in ...

in Woodstock, NY, he studied contemporary music with

John Cage John Milton Cage Jr. (September 5, 1912 – August 12, 1992) was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading fi ...

Frederic Rzewski Frederic Anthony Rzewski ( ; April 13, 1938 – June 26, 2021) was an American composer and pianist, considered to be one of the most important American composer-pianists of his time. His major compositions, which often incorporate social an ...

Anthony Braxton Anthony Braxton (born June 4, 1945) is an American experimental composer, educator, music theorist, improviser and multi-instrumentalist who is best known for playing saxophones, particularly the alto. Braxton grew up on the South Side of Chica ...

, the

Art Ensemble of Chicago The Art Ensemble of Chicago is an avant-garde jazz group that grew out of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians ( AACM) in the late 1960s. The ensemble integrates many jazz styles and plays many instruments, including "little ...

Carla Bley Carla Bley (born Lovella May Borg; May 11, 1936) is an American jazz composer, pianist, organist and bandleader. An important figure in the free jazz movement of the 1960s, she is perhaps best known for her jazz opera '' Escalator over the Hill'' ...

and

Karl Berger Karl Hans Berger (born March 30, 1935 in Heidelberg, Germany) is a German jazz pianist, composer, and educator. Career Berger played piano in Germany when he was ten and worked in his teens at a club in Heidelberg. He learned modern jazz from v ...

, among many others.

Music projects

As a musician and band leader, Bern is best known as co-founder of

, founder of Diaspora Redux, The Other Europeans, and the Semer Ensemble. He has also performed and recorded with the

Klezmer Conservatory Band The Klezmer Conservatory Band is a Boston-based group which performs traditional klezmer music; it was formed by Hankus Netsky of the New England Conservatory of Music in 1980. Originally formed for a single concert, they have gone on to release el ...

Andy Statman Andy Statman (born 1950) is a noted American klezmer clarinetist and bluegrass/newgrass mandolinist. Life and career Statman was born in New York City and grew up in the borough of Queens. Beginning at age 12, he learned to play banjo and gui ...

, Bern, Brody & Rodach,

Guy Klucevsek Guy Klucevsek (born February 26, 1947) is an American-born accordionist and composer. Klucevsek is one of relatively few accordion players active in new music, jazz and free improvisation. Klucevsek was born in New York City, and raised outside ...

, the Accordion Tribe,

The Klezmatics The Klezmatics are an American klezmer music group based in New York City, who have achieved fame singing in several languages, most notably mixing older Yiddish tunes with other types of more contemporary music of differing origins. They have ...

Itzhak Perlman Itzhak Perlman ( he, יצחק פרלמן; born August 31, 1945) is an Israeli-American violinist widely considered one of the greatest violinists in the world. Perlman has performed worldwide and throughout the United States, in venues that hav ...

, Alpen Klezmer and Voices of Ashkenaz, among many others. In 2016-17 he composed a song cycle based on children’s poems by the Polish-Jewish poet, Kadya Molodovsky. The song cycle was the centerpiece of the Kadya Choir project
www.kadya.eu
, which brought together a girls choir from Weimar (

Schola Cantorum The Schola Cantorum de Paris is a private conservatory in Paris. It was founded in 1894 by Charles Bordes, Alexandre Guilmant and Vincent d'Indy as a counterbalance to the Paris Conservatoire's emphasis on opera. History La Schola was founded i ...

Weimar) with a girls choir from Tel Aviv-Jaffa
Voices of Peace Choir
and is the subject of a feature-length documentary film ''The Young Kadyas'' that has been shown in German theaters and at international film festivals (https://www.1meter60-film.de/film-detail/die-jungen-kadyas/).

Weimar-based projects

Beginning in 1999, Bern’s activities have increasingly been centered in

Weimar Weimar is a city in the state of Thuringia, Germany. It is located in Central Germany between Erfurt in the west and Jena in the east, approximately southwest of Leipzig, north of Nuremberg and west of Dresden. Together with the neighbouri ...

, Germany. He is artistic director of Yiddish Summer Weimar, the Other Music Academy (OMA), the OMA Improvisation Project, the OMA Middle Eastern Music & Cultures Project, and Weimar klingt!, among others, as well as chair of Other Music Academy e.V., the non-profit organization responsible for those projects.

Yiddish Summer Weimar (YSW)

Bern is founding artistic director of Yiddish Summer Weimar, a five-week summer institute and festival in Weimar, Germany. Currently, it is the longest and most intensive program for the research, dissemination and creative renewal of Yiddish culture in the world. YSW annually attracts students, artists, educators and audiences from more than 20 countries to its workshops, concerts, lectures and symposia, new music, dance and theater projects, jam sessions and more. Bern’s artistic direction gives equal weight to subject matter and pedagogical approach. YSW explores the subject of Yiddish culture as an ongoing, fundamentally intercultural process that is part of a complex matrix of European and non-European cultures. Its pedagogical approach emphasizes experiential learning, embodied knowledge, diversity and social interaction, and the complementarity of artistic, scientific and social creativity. Bern’s vision of YSW as a non-authoritarian, international and diverse learning community has been strongly influenced by the principles of

Ted Sizer Theodore Ryland Sizer (June 23, 1932 – October 21, 2009) was a leader of educational reform in the United States, the founder (and eventually President Emeritus) of the Essential school movement and was known for challenging longstanding practi ...

and the Coalition of Essential Schools. Yiddish Summer Weimar has received awards from the European Union, the European Commission, the German Music Council, the German Federal Cultural Foundation, among others.

Other Music Academy e.V.

Bern is founding chair of Other Music Academy e.V., a non-profit organization with more than 100 members worldwide. Founded in 2006 to carry out Yiddish Summer Weimar, its mission has expanded to include the Other Music Academy and all of its projects.

The Other Music Academy (OMA)

In 2009, the city of Weimar gave Other Music Academy e.V. a 33-year lease on an abandoned school building in Ernst-Kohl-Strasse 23 to be a base for the organization's projects and activities. Bern envisioned for the building a new kind of institution dedicated to the

inclusion Inclusion or Include may refer to: Sociology * Social inclusion, aims to create an environment that supports equal opportunity for individuals and groups that form a society. ** Inclusion (disability rights), promotion of people with disabiliti ...

and

empowerment Empowerment is the degree of autonomy and self-determination in people and in communities. This enables them to represent their interests in a responsible and self-determined way, acting on their own authority. It is the process of becoming strong ...

of widely diverse social groups, through cooperative participation in transdisciplinary projects that combine artistic, scientific and social/political practices. The OMA is also the home for all of the current projects of Other Music Academy e.V., including Yiddish Summer, the Improvisation Project, the Open Café, the Middle Eastern Music and Cultures Project, and more. The OMA building is undergoing renovation parallel to the development of the OMA organizational structure. Presently, the OMA physical space comprises artist ateliers, workshop spaces, a music café and a small concert space. The OMA organizational structure will eventually comprise three, interlocking parts: i) a Creation Tank, where projects are conceived and managed, ii) a Curriculum of learning goals and tasks which flow directly from the projects, and iii) a Social Center, including the OMA Café, which encourages interaction among all project participants. A 300 m² space is currently being developed as a larger workshop and performance space. The OMA has received recognition and support from the German Federal Cultural Foundation, the City of Weimar and the State Chancellery of Thuringia, among others.

Present-Time Composition (PTC)

Bern is the creator of Present-Time Composition, a musical and educational approach informed by cognitive science that integrates the methods of improvisation and composition. He has taught workshops in PTC at the University of Cincinnati, the Conservatory of Music Franz Liszt (Weimar), to members of the

Pittsburgh Symphony The ''Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra'' (''PSO'') is an American orchestra based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The orchestra's home is Heinz Hall, located in Pittsburgh's Cultural District, Pittsburgh, Cultural District. History The Pittsburgh Sy ...

and members of the Lyon Symphony, at the University of Arnhem, the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp, the

University of Virginia The University of Virginia (UVA) is a Public university#United States, public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. Founded in 1819 by Thomas Jefferson, the university is ranked among the top academic institutions in the United S ...

, the Joseph Haydn Conservatory (Eisenstadt), at the Exploratorium Berlin, through the International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation, in the context of Winter Edition (Weimar) and the OMA Improvisation Project, among many others. The fundamental principle of PTC is that highly complex musical decisions, normally thought to be the domain of composition, can be improvised in real time and communicated within a group, to produce a collectively improvised composition that is aesthetically comparable with music composed traditionally by individuals. This involves extensive training with step-by-step exercises that teach the musician how to reduce increasingly complex musical perceptions to apparently simple and immediate impulses. Currently, Bern is in the process of developing a certification program for PTC.“Think Fast: An Introduction to Present-Time Composition,” in “Researching Improvisation”, 2016, Transcript Verlag

Activities in theater and dance

Bern is active as a composer and music director for theater and dance productions. Between 1994-96 he was Music Director at the Bremen Municipal Theater, where he composed and directed music for productions of Angels in America, The Threepenny Opera and Midsummer Night’s Dream, among others. As a free-lancer, he has composed and directed music for theater productions at the Grillo Theater (Essen), the

Maxim Gorki Theater The Maxim Gorki Theatre (german: Maxim Gorki Theater) is a theatre in Berlin-Mitte named after the Soviet writer, Maxim Gorky. In 2012, the Mayor of Berlin Klaus Wowereit named Şermin Langhoff as the artist director of the theatre. History It i ...

(Berlin), the German National Theater (Weimar), the Municipal Theater of Dortmund, and the Luzern Municipal Theater, among others. He has worked with directors Josha Sobol, Silvia Armbruster, Constanza Lauterbach, Charlie Risse and Christian Friedrich, among others. In 1992, he created a score based exclusively on music composed in the Vilnius Ghetto for Josha Sobol’s own production of his play “Ghetto” in Essen. In 2001, he directed music for the first production of The Threepenny Opera in Yiddish translation by Michael Wex, directed at the Saidye Bronfman Center for the Arts in of Montreal by Bryna Wasserman. Bern also composes music for contemporary dance, including for the Eliza Miller Dance Company production of “Sideways” and “Märchen” in New York (2002), for which he was given an award by the Mary Flagler Carey Trust. In 2019 he composed and co-wrote the libretto with Yuri Vedenyapin for ''Di megile fun Vaymar'', an original music theater work that confronts

Itzik Manger Itzik Manger (30 May 1901, Czernowitz, then Austrian-Hungarian Empire – 21 February 1969, Gedera, Israel; yi, איציק מאַנגער) was a prominent Yiddish language, Yiddish poet and playwright, a self-proclaimed folk bard, visionary, a ...

’s ''Megile lider'' with texts by Goethe and other authors, and the work was performed that year during Yiddish Summer Weimar (https://vimeo.com/687612210). In 2022 he composed Glikl-oratorye (Glikl Oratorio: A HerStory) to a libretto in four languages (Old Yiddish, Eastern Yiddish, German and English) by Diana Matut, based on the memoirs of Glikl of Hameln. The oratorio was created in cooperation with the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt Weimar and performed by music students from throughout Germany in late April and early March 2022 in Weimar, Erfurt and Halle (https://www.glikl.eu).

Other professional activities

Bern has been on the faculty of

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...

, the

and the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati. He has been a guest lecturer at

, the

Pittsburgh University The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the universit ...

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

, the Conservatory of Music Franz Liszt (Weimar), the

School of Oriental and African Studies SOAS University of London (; the School of Oriental and African Studies) is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Founded in 1916, SOAS is located in the Bloomsbury ar ...

(University of London), the University of Arnhem, the

University of Mainz The Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (german: Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) is a public research university in Mainz, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany, named after the printer Johannes Gutenberg since 1946. With approximately 32,000 stu ...

, and the Belvedere Musik Gymnasium (Weimar), among others. He was Music Director for London KlezFest in the mid 2000s, and has taught on the faculty of Klezkanada,

Klezkamp KlezKamp was a yearly Klezmer music and Yiddish culture festival in New York State. Produced by ethnomusicologist and award-winning record and radio producer Henry Sapoznik from 1985 - 2015, the program created an innovative and intensive environm ...

(New York), Moscow KlezFest, the International Klezmer Festival Fürth, the

Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków The Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków ( pl, Festiwal Kultury Żydowskiej w Krakowie, yi, ייִדישער קולטור־פֿעסטיוואַל אין קראָקע) is an annual cultural event organized since 1988 in the once Jewish district of K ...

, the Singer Festival in Warsaw, and many others.

Recordings and films

Bern has been featured on many audio recordings and films. The list below represents a selection: * Brave Old World ** ''Klezmer Music'' ** ''Beyond the Pale'' ** ''Blood Oranges'' ** ''Bless the Fire'' ** ''Dus gezang fin geto Lodz/Song of the Lodz Ghetto'' ** ''Hoffman's Doina'', with Alex Jacobowitz single work released as CD in 2019 ** ''Live in Concert (Film/DVD, directed by David Kaufman)'' ** ''Song of the Lodz Ghetto (Film/DVD, directed by David Kaufman)'' ** ''The New Klezmorim (Film/DVD, directed by David Kaufman)'' * The Other Europeans ** ''Splendor'' ** ''The Broken Sound (Film/DVD, directed by Yvonne & Wolfgang Andrae'' * The Semer Ensemble ** ''Rescued Treasure'' * Guy Klucevsek & Alan Bern ** ''Accordance'' ** ''Notefalls'' * With Itzhak Perlman, Brave Old World, Andy Statman Trio ** ''In the Fiddler’s House'' ** ''Live in the Fiddler’s House'' ** ''In the Fiddler’s House (Film/DVD)'' * Bern, Brody & Rodach ** ''Triophilia'' * The Klezmer Conservatory Band ** ''Klez!'' * Alpen Klezmer ** ''Alpenklezmer'' ** ''Zum Meer'' * Voices of Ashkenaz * The Kadya Choir ** The Young Kadyas CD (2022) ** Featured in Die jungen Kadyas Documentary Film (2022)

Awards (selected)

(2022) * Thuringia Order of Merit (2017) * ''Weimar Prize'' (2016) * General Project Support, German Federal Cultural Foundation, for Yiddish Summer Weimar (2016) * New States Funding, German Federal Cultural Foundation, for the Other Music Academy (2014–15) * German Record Critic’s Prize for “Splendor,” The Other Europeans (2012) * German Record Critic’s Prize for “Sol Sajn,” (2009) * ''European Commission Award'' for Best Practices for the Roma Community (2009) * TFF Rudolstadt ''Ruth Lifetime Achievement Award'' (2009) * “Compass” Award for Best Practices, Jewish Music and Culture (2009) * German Music Council, ''1st Prize for Intercultural Music'' * German Record Critic’s Prize for “Blood Oranges” Brave Old World (1998)

Publications

* ''Think Fast: An Introduction to Present-Time Composition'', in ''Researching Improvisation'', 2016, Transcript Verlag * ''Klezmer Duets for Clarinet and Accordion'', with Christian Dawid, 2016, Universal Edition * ''Klezmer Accordion'' for Intermediate Accordion, 2015, Universal Edition * ''Liner notes to 12-CD collection Sol Sajn: Jewish Music in Germany'' ''1953-2009'', 2009, Bear Family *
Who is Weiskopf? Joshua Sobol’s Ghetto on East & West German Stages
', 2003 Paul Lecture, Indiana University Press * ''Representing Jewish Identity'',2001, La Rasegna Mensile, Spring * ''From Klezmer to New Jewish Music'', 1998, Mens en Melodie * ''Remarks on “Ghetto” and “ghettos“'', 1993, Maxim Gorki Theater publication

References

External links

* Alan Bern website (with links to various projects)
www.alanbern.net
* The Other Music Academy website
www.othermusicacademy.eu
* Yiddish Summer website
www.yiddishsummer.eu
* Deutschlandradiokultur, Interview mit Alan Bern: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw2POkqpSEE * Deutschlandradiokultur, ''Wie vielfältig ist die Jüdische Musik?'': http://www.deutschlandradiokultur.de/komponist-alan-bern-wie-vielfaeltig-ist-jiddische-musik.970.de.html?dram:article_id=325433 * many similar video and audio interview can be found with a google search

braveoldworld.com
(currently under construction) {{DEFAULTSORT:Bern, Alan 1955 births Klezmer musicians American musical theatre composers Living people Indiana University alumni Tufts University alumni University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music alumni