Nick DiBerardino
Chair of Composition Studies
Senior Associate Dean, Performance Studies
Director, Ensemble 20/21
Composition / Performance
Composer Nick DiBerardino is noted for creating “richly textured, multilayered” sound worlds (Minnesota Star Tribune) that tell fantastical tales. He has written music about everything from failed flying machines and particle physics to Walt Whitman and tall glasses of beet juice.
A Rhodes Scholar, Mr. DiBerardino has received commissions from many distinguished artists and institutions, including Symphony Tacoma, the Dover Quartet, Sandbox Percussion, the New College Choir, arx duo, Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, Music From Angel Fire, and saxophonist Matthew Levy. Residencies include those for the Intimacy of Creativity Festival at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Avaloch Farm Music Institute, and Hidden Valley, where Mr. DiBerardino is a founding faculty member of the Emerging Composers Intensive. His works have been performed around the world by the American Composers Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, Aizuri Quartet, Contemporaneous, So Percussion, and many others.
Mr. DiBerardino founded England’s first laptop orchestra, OxLOrk, and has designed several collaborative composition initiatives, including a children’s opera composed with students at Girard College and a workshop series for people living with Alzheimer’s disease, created in partnership with the Penn Memory Center.
Mr. DiBerardino holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, an M.Phil with distinction from the University of Oxford, a Master of Music degree from the Yale School of Music, a post-baccalaureate diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music, and an MFA from Princeton University, all in composition. Mr. DiBerardino previously served as lead instructor of musical studies, composition coordinator, and administrator for Curtis’s Young Artist Summer Program, duties he still performs for the Sphinx Performance Academy.