CELLIST-COMPOSER FOLLOWS HIS MUSE
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Bjorn Berkhout, PhD |
“You’re not really cognitive of what is going on in your brain,” Berkhout explains. “There’s just this desire to get this piece out. Then you go back and ‘taste’ the composition and make sure it’s how it’s supposed to be.”
Berkhout, who’s been playing the cello since the age of 6, began composing at
12 after watching a performance by the Princeton String Quartet.
“After the concert, my thought wasn’t, ‘I want to play that,’ ” he says. “It was, ‘That was a really cool piece of music; I could have written that.’ ”
The next day, Berkhout went to the bookstore, bought some manuscript paper and started writing music. His first piece, “Allegro Barbero for the String Quartet,” was born. Soon after, he expanded the piece to a 15-minute concert band piece called “Fantasia No 1.”
This fall, Berkhout is concentrating on percussion work with a local group called Sonic Inertia, which combines the kinetic energy of dance and percussion. He’s also working on a marimba concerto, which will be performed by the Loyola University Orchestra at its free fall concert at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 20 in Mundelein Center, LSC.
Berkhout holds a doctorate in composition from Northwestern University, where he was the recipient of the Faricy Award for Creative Music.
APRIL SPECHT