Derek Bermel helped design, direct, and implement all of the American Composers Orchestra’s professional development programs for composers, including Earshot and the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute (JCOI).

Earshot (including the former Underwood New Music Readings), has supported the development of emerging orchestral composers in the United States for 25 years. Each season, ACO joins partner orchestras across the United States to offer young composers the opportunity to have their piece read, workshopped, and recorded in a collaborative setting. Earshot alumni have won many major composition awards, including the Pulitzer, Grammy, Grawemeyer, American Academy of Arts & Letters, and Rome Prizes, and are regularly commissioned by orchestras around the world. Previous partner orchestras have included the New York Philharmonic, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, Nashville Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, and the Aguascalientes Symphony Orchestra in Mexico. Click here for more information.

The week-long Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute (JCOI) mentors jazz musicians in composing for orchestra. The syllabus includes workshops on orchestration, style, the history of intersections between jazz and orchestral music, and the exploration of bringing jazz-based approaches to concert music.

JCOI director James Newton said of its curriculum in an interview with UCLA, “A great deal of attention was also focused on how the language that is developed in jazz composition and improvisation is a great resource that should not be devalued, but viewed as a strength.”

Click here and here to learn more about the program, as written about by the Wall Street Journal and NPR.