“The work opens with a moody episode built atop a repetitive descending bass riff, with plaintive harmonies and sinewy solo lines. When he scores bluesy brass chords, Mr. Bermel spikes them effectively with gnarly modernist dissonance. There were riveting passages that combined choralelike harmonies with unhinged rhythms; a bleakly comic episode in which the brass players from the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra evoked a wondrous gaggle of squawking, whining and pleading human voices.”

“The five-movement suite Migration Series (2006) was commissioned by Marsalis for Lincoln Center and, unlike most attempts to fuse these jazz and classical genres, Bermel succeeds with Bernsteinian élan. His orchestration is vivid – with touches of Lalo Schifrin, Ives, Copland and a number of jazz stars (Thelonious Monk not least) – but always seems an organic part of the composition, growing out of the jazzy harmonies and melodies, rather than something grafted on as an afterthought.”