Eli Berman

Eli Berman (they/she) is a composer-vocalist, improviser, and instrument builder originally from Pittsburgh, PA. She creates music that explores links between bodies, genders, ancestries, and environments using experimental vocal techniques in relation to western classical, Jewish cantorial, Yiddish, Slovak, and Appalachian singing traditions. She also makes music with her original Xibuccal Instruments, a collection of electro-acoustic extensions of the human vocal tract made of pipes, microphones, speakers, and delay pedals. A National YoungArts Foundation Winner in Music and an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer's Award Finalist, Eli has written and been commissioned for a variety of pieces for concert, film, theater, and multimedia, including music for the Eschaton Ensemble of Vanderbilt University, an installation piece for the Pittsburgh Biennial, and the soundtracks to the TV pilot “Gone" and the short film "Flesh and Iron." Her work has been premiered at multiple festivals including (R)evolution: Resonant Bodies at the Banff Centre, New Music On the Point, the Atlantic Music Festival, Gender Unbound, and Yiddish Summer Weimar. As a baritone and countertenor, Eli has premiered multiple works by living composers, including the U.S. premiere of John Tavener’s “Total Eclipse.” In April 2018, she performed on a New York Times critically-acclaimed concert of works by Eve Beglarian. Eli has presented her music and creative research on non-binary voices at The Transgender Singing Voice Conference and at Princeton University, where she graduated with a B.A. in Music in 2020. At Princeton, Eli studied composition with Dan Trueman and Steve Mackey as well as voice with David Kellett and Gabriel Crouch.