Alan Duff Berman

Alan Berman has championed new music since he began studying guitar in high school. After receiving his MFA in guitar performance at UCLA as a student of Theodore Norman, he performed on European concert tours with Peter Yates and Matthew Elgart, and throughout California with his Signs of Life and Joy of Sextet ensembles, which commissioned new works by Los Angeles composers and performed rarely heard 20th-century chamber works. His publishing company, California Guitar Archives (www.calguitar.com), has presented guitar transcriptions and original music as well as the pioneering manual Prepared Guitar Techniques. Berman was the guitar soloist in the world premiere performances of Henri Lazarof’s ballet Mirror, Mirror. He has also premiered solo and chamber works by Paul Francis Witt, James Gable, Theodore Norman, Peter Yates, Ken DeVito, Stephen David Beck, and others. His BA in Music is from California State University, Dominguez Hills, where he received the Advanced Music Theory Award as a student of Richard Bunger-Evans. He has written reviews of concerts, contemporary dance, and guitar music and recordings for The Times Quotidian, Soundboard, and Guitar Review. Berman also taught guitar at Los Angeles City College. He appears as soloist and chamber musician on the DVD of selections from the Theodore Norman Legacy Concerts, which he produced in recognition the 100th anniversary of the birth of his late mentor. Berman is an online facilitator for Music for People, a collective dedicated to creative expression through improvisation. He has also studied creative movement with Anna Halprin, Simone Forti, Fred Sugerman, and Pilobolus.