Bio

 

Miriam Gerberg has been a composer, ethnomusicologist and performer since 1978. Her work with world musics includes a specialty in Middle Eastern musics, including performing classical Arabic music, Japanese koto and Javanese gamelan. As a composer she has been commissioned to write works for chamber orchestra, improvisational ensembles, opera, music theater, chamber instrumental & vocal, dance and video. Miriam’s compositions have been performed across the U.S. and in Israel, the Netherlands, Australia, Japan and Sumatra, and she has performed original collaborative music/dance works with choreographer John Munger in the duo Footloose in Motley since 1992. In support of her composing work she has received grants and fellowships from the McKnight Foundation, Meet The Composer, Inc., the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, the American Composers Forum, the Hillel Foundation, and the Minnesota Center for Arts Education. She has received the Eli Wiesel Award for Jewish Culture and Arts (twice), Special Awards from ASCAP (ten) and Brooklyn Opera Theater’s Chamber Opera Award, and has been composer-in-residence at the Minnesota Opera Company, Hilai Center for the Arts (Tel Aviv) and the Empire State Institute for the Performing Arts (Albany, NY). She has studied with many master artists as well as earning a composition degree from Crane School of Music, an MA in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University and trained as an American Sign Language Interpreter in St. Paul,