John Berners

John Berners (b.1961, Milwaukee) began composing at an early age andstudied trombone at Northwestern University with Frank Crisafulli, earning a B.M in performance and a B.A. in Mathematics. Composition studies began privately with C. Curtis-Smith in Kalamazoo, MI and continued at the University of Michigan under William Albright, EvanChambers, Bright Sheng, Michael Daugherty and William Bolcom. Currently aPh.D. candidate, John Berners lives in Silver Spring MD, and is Assistant Professor of Music at American University in Washington, D.C. His workshave been played by the Detroit Symphony, the Boston Symphony brass section, the Tanglewood Festival Brass, Kalamazoo Symphony, Brave NewWorks, the Michigan Chamber Brass and many college ensembles. His music has been recorded by pianist Alan Huckleberry, the Millar Brass Ensemble, and Boston's Old South Brass.

Notes
Praeludium program note:
I was delighted when Chris Kim asked me to write a piece for the Brave New Works Art of Fugue Project. My first thought was, with all those fugues, why not a prelude? I began composing Praeludium with the idea of a serene, major-key prelude like some found in the WTC. After a fewpages, however, the mood of the piece took a definite turn for the worse.A short quote from Bach's Contrapunctus IX leads the music in a darker direction. Eventually, the fragments of Baroque-style figures are left tofend for themselves in increasingly bleak surroundings.
--John Berners