Nick DiBerardino
About
Composer Nick DiBerardino tinkers with the weird, rusty musical machines of the classical canon, repurposing them to tell fresh and fantastical tales. He has written music about everything from failed flying machines and particle physics to shadow puppets and tall glasses of beet juice. No matter the inspiration, Nick's music and all his energies as a composer, educator, and administrator flow from the belief that music can invite people into inclusive communities.
Nick is a Rhodes Scholar whose music has been commissioned by many artists and institutions, including the Dover Quartet, Symphony Tacoma, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the New College Choir, arx duo, Sandbox Percussion, The Brass Project, Matthew Levy, Gretna Music, Vesper Concerts, the Rhodes Trust, soundSCAPE Festival, Bennington Chamber Music Conference, Ensemble Dance, the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, and Music From Angel Fire. His residencies have included those at the Intimacy of Creativity Festival at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Avaloch Farm Music Institute, Snow Pond Center for the Arts, and the Luzerne Music Center. His works have been performed around the world by the Philadelphia Orchestra Winds, Artosphere Festival Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Contemporaneous, Aizuri Quartet, So Percussion, the Israeli Chamber Project, David Shifrin, Soovin Kim, Gloria Chien, Tony Arnold, Tara O’Connor, Danny Phillips, Steven Copes, and many other ensembles and artists. Nick’s forays into film music contributed to an AudioFile Earphones Award for This is Not My Hat, Scholastic’s film and audiobook adaptation of the Caldecott Medal-winning story by Jon Klassen.
Nick is the Director of the Curtis New Music Ensemble, which embraces the cutting edge of contemporary classical music through the highest level of artistry. Under Nick’s direction, each of the ensemble’s concerts has been presented to sold-out audiences in Philadelphia. Nick has also worked as an artistic consultant for the Tanglewood Music Center, advising on creative decisions and repertoire curation for the Festival of Contemporary Music.
Nick previously co-founded and directed the Oxford Laptop Orchestra (OxLOrk), a chamber music ensemble comprised of both musicians and coders. Powered by hemispherical speakers and novel software instruments, OxLOrk was England’s first laptop orchestra — an ensemble dedicated to creating live electroacoustic performances that are maximally individually expressive. With Nick presiding over its inaugural year, OxLOrk presented five concerts, including a collaboration with the Ashmolean Art Museum and an interactive performance at the Barbican Centre in London.
Nick has enthusiastically worked to extend the reach of new music through collaborative projects. In 2024, he presented two live shows alongside John de Lancie (Star Trek, Breaking Bad) centered on art and inspiration, featuring Nick’s Darmok & Jalad and a world premiere based on text by Gene Roddenberry. Nick’s children’s opera Anansi and the Great Light, produced by Curtis’s Family Concert Series, previously explored a new model for community involvement in the creative process that was highlighted by PBS WHYY in Philadelphia.
Nick is a passionate speaker who enjoys reaching listeners both at home and abroad. He has appeared on BBC Radio Oxford and public radio and television in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Minnesota, and New Mexico. He regularly gives lectures and talks to a wide range of audiences, including a recent engagement at the American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States.
Nick earned his bachelor’s degree at Princeton University, an M.Phil with distinction from the University of Oxford, an M.M. 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.
Nick is Provost and Dean of the Conservatory at the Curtis Institute of Music, where he also serves on Curtis’s composition faculty as chair of composition studies. He previously served as Curtis’s Senior Associate Dean of Performance Studies and taught on Curtis’s musical studies faculty. He is currently on the composition faculty of the highSCORE festival in Pavia, Italy and was a founding faculty member of the Emerging Composers Intensive at Hidden Valley Music Seminars.