Alan Bern

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Alan Bern
Alan Bern by cellist / photographer Yulia Kabakova

Alan Bern (born 1955 in Bloomington , Indiana ) is an American composer, pianist, accordionist, music educator, cultural and educational activist based in Berlin since 1987. He is the founder and artistic director of the Yiddish Summer Weimar and the Other Music Academy ( GRANNY). His contributions to the research, dissemination and creative renewal of Jewish music, including a. by Brave Old World , The Other Europeans and The Semer Ensemble , are internationally recognized. He is the founder of Present-Time Composition , a musical and pedagogical method that brings together improvisation and composition techniques, taking into account cognitive science. In 2016 he received the Weimar Prize in recognition of his longstanding contribution to the intellectual and cultural reputation of the city of Weimar. In 2017 he was also awarded the Order of Merit of the Free State of Thuringia .

education

Bern received a BA cum laude in religious studies from Indiana University (1976), an MA in philosophy under Daniel Dennett from Tufts University (1983) and a DMA in music composition under Joel Hoffmann from the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati (2006).

In addition to his formal training, Bern studied classical piano under Sidney Foster, Paul Badura-Skoda and Leonard Shure and chamber music under Josef Gingold and György Sebök . He studied jazz with David Baker at Indiana University and improvisation with Ran Blake at the New England Conservatory . At the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, NY, he studied contemporary music under John Cage , Frederic Rzewski , Anthony Braxton , the Art Ensemble of Chicago , Carla Bley and Karl Berger a . a. m.

Music projects

As a musician and band leader, Bern is best known as the co-founder of Brave Old World , founder of Diaspora Redux, The Other Europeans and The Semer Ensemble. He also played with the Klezmer Conservatory Band, Andy Statman, the Bern, Brody & Rodach Trio, Guy Klucevsek , the Accordion Tribe , the Klezmatics , Itzhak Perlman , AlpenKlezmer, the Voices of Ashkenaz and others. v. a. m.

Projects in Weimar

Since 1999, Bern's activities have increasingly focused on Weimar , Thuringia. He is artistic director of the Yiddish Summer Weimar, the Other Music Academy (OMA), the OMA Improvisation Project, the OMA Middle Eastern Music & Cultures Project, von Weimar klingt !, and others. Bern is the chairman of the Other Music Academy eV, which, as a non-profit organization, supports these projects.

Yiddish Summer Weimar

Bern is the founder and artistic director of Yiddish Summer Weimar, an annual five-week summer institute and culture festival in Weimar. YSW is currently the longest and most intensive program in the world for the research, dissemination and creative renewal of Yiddish culture. Every year YSW attracts students, artists, educators and audiences from more than 20 countries and involves them in workshops, concerts, lectures and symposia, new music , dance, theater projects and jam sessions.

Bern's artistic orientation places the same emphasis on content as on pedagogical approaches. YSW explores Yiddish culture as an ongoing, fundamentally intercultural process as part of a complex matrix of European and non-European cultures. YSW's educational approach emphasizes experimental learning, embodied knowledge, diversity and social interaction, as well as the complementary relationship between artistic, scientific and social creativity. Bern's vision of YSW as a non-authoritarian, international and diverse learning community was strongly influenced by the principles of Ted Sizer and the Coalition of Essential Schools.

Yiddish Summer Weimar received awards and support from the European Union , the Council of Europe, the German Music Council and the Federal Cultural Foundation .

Other Music Academy eV

Bern is a founding member and chairman of the Other Music Academy eV, a non-profit association based in Weimar with over a hundred members worldwide. Originally founded in 2006 to host the Yiddish Summer Weimar, its mission has been expanded to include the Other Music Academy and all of its projects.

Other Music Academy ("OMA")

In 2009, the Other Music Academy eV received a 33-year long lease agreement from the city ​​of Weimar for an empty school building at Ernst-Kohl-Straße 23 as the seat and place of implementation of the association's projects and activities. As a usage concept for the building, Bern developed the vision of a new type of institution dedicated to the inclusion and empowerment of a wide range of very different social groups through cooperative participation in transdisciplinary projects. OMA projects combine artistic, scientific and social or political practices and always have the ultimate goal of empowering their participants.

The OMA is also the home for all ongoing projects of the Other Music Academy eV, including Yiddish Summer Weimar, the OMA Improvisation Project, the OpenCafé, the Middle Eastern Music and Cultures Project and others. a. m.

The OMA building is being repaired in parallel with the development of the organizational structures of the OMA as an academy. Currently, the physical location of the OMA includes artist studios, workshop rooms, a café and a small concert room. The OMA organizational structure boils down to three interrelated areas:

  1. a creation tank in which projects are developed and managed,
  2. a curriculum of learning objectives and tasks that arise directly from the projects and
  3. a sociocultural center, including the OMAcafé, which promotes the exchange between all project participants. A 300 square meter room is currently being developed as a workshop and performance room.

The OMA received recognition and support from the Federal Cultural Foundation , the City of Weimar and the Thuringian State Chancellery, among others .

Present-time composition

Bern is the founder of Present-Time Composition , a musical and pedagogical method that brings together improvisation and composition techniques, taking into account cognitive science. He has taught PTC at the University of Cincinnati , the Liszt School of Music (Weimar) , for violinists of the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Lyon Symphony Orchestra, at the University of Arnhem, the Royal Conservatory Antwerp, the University of Virginia , the Joseph-Haydn- Conservatory (Eisenstadt) , at the Exploratorium Berlin , by the International Yehudi Menuhin Foundation, in the context of the Winter Edition (Weimar) and the OMA Improvisation Project, a. v. a. m.

The basic principle of PTC is that highly complex musical decisions that are usually expected in the field of composition can be improvised in real time and in communication with a group. In this way, collectively improvised compositions can be created that are aesthetically comparable to music traditionally composed by an individual. This requires extensive training with step-by-step exercises that teach musicians to reduce increasingly complex musical perception to seemingly simple and immediate impulses. Bern is in the process of developing a certification program for PTC for the accreditation of educational offers at national and international universities.

Activities in theater and dance

Bern works as a composer and music director for theater and dance productions. Between 1994 and 1996 he was the musical director of the theater at Bremen Theater, where he performed the music a. a. composed and directed for Angels in America , The Threepenny Opera and Midsummer Night's Dream . As a freelance, he composed and directed music for theater productions at the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, Theater Dortmund, Grillo-Theater Essen, Lucerne Theater, German National Theater Weimar and others. a. m. He worked with the directors Silvia Armbruster, Siegfried Bühr, Christina Friedrich , Andreas Herrmann, Konstanze Lauterbach, Carl-Hermann Risse, Joshua Sobol and Andrej Woron. In 1992 he created the score for Joshua Sobol's own production of Ghetto in Essen, based solely on music from the Vilnius Ghetto . In 2001 he directed the music for the first production of The Threepenny Opera in Yiddish translation by Michael Wex at the Saidye Bronfman Center for the Arts in Montreal, directed by Bryna Wasserman.

Bern composes music for contemporary dance, including for the Eliza Miller Dance Company production of Sideways and Märchen in New York (2002), for which he received the Mary Flagler Carey Trust award.

Other professional activities

Bern has lectured at Tufts University, the New England Conservatory and the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati. He was visiting lecturer at Indiana University, the University of Virginia, Pittsburgh University, Carnegie Mellon University, the Liszt School of Music (Weimar), the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), the University of Arnhem, at the University of Mainz, and at the Belvedere Music Gymnasium (Weimar).

He was music director for the London KlezFest in the mid-2000s and taught at Klezkanada, Klezkamp (New York), Moscow KlezFest, the International Klezmer Festival Fürth, the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, the Singer Festival in Warsaw, etc. v. a. m.

Discography and filmography

  • Brave Old World
    • Klezmer Music
    • Beyond the Pale
    • Blood oranges
    • Bless the fire
    • Dus gezang fin geto Lodz / Song of the Lodz Ghetto
    • 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
    • Emergency
  • 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!
  • Alps Klezmer
    • Alpenklezmer
    • To the sea
  • Voices of Ashkenaz
    • Voices of Ashkenaz

Awards and honors (selection)

  • Order of Merit of the Free State of Thuringia (2017)
  • Weimar Prize (2016)
  • General project funding, Federal Cultural Foundation, for Yiddish Summer Weimar (2016)
  • Fund New Lands, Federal Cultural Foundation, for the Other Music Academy (2014–15)
  • German Record Critics' Prize for "Splendor", The Other Europeans (2012)
  • German Record Critics' Prize for “Sol Sajn”, (2009)
  • Best Practices in Favor of the Roma Community Award of the Council of Europe for The Other Europeans (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 Critics' 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 level accordion, 2015, Universal Edition
  • Commentary on the 12-CD collection “Sol Sajn: Jewish Music in Germany 1953-2009”, 2009, Bear Family
  • [1] 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

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see The Other Europeans and The Semer Ensemble
  2. ↑ “Think Fast: An Introduction to Present-Time Composition,” in “Researching Improvisation”, 2016, Transcript Verlag
  3. ↑ Improvisation In New Jewish Music: Master Class w / Alan Bern, Paul Brody, Cesar Lerner & Martin Lillich of Diaspora Redux | Freight & Salvage. (No longer available online.) In: www.thefreight.org. Archived from the original on September 16, 2016 ; accessed on September 15, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Thuringian Order of Merit to (...) ( Memento of the original dated August 30, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Thuringian State Chancellery; Media information 97/2017 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.thueringen.de
  5. ↑ Brave Old World Bios. Archived from the original ; accessed on September 15, 2016 .
  6. ^ Yiddish Summer Weimar. The Yiddish heart of Europe dares to cross borders. (No longer available online.) August 2, 2016, archived from the original on September 16, 2016 ; accessed on September 15, 2016 .
  7. ↑ Thuringian Order of Merit to (...) ( Memento of the original dated August 30, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Thuringian State Chancellery; Media information 97/2017 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.thueringen.de
personal data
SURNAME Bern, Alan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American composer, pianist, accordionist, cultural and educational activist
DATE OF BIRTH 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Bloomington , Indiana