Flashpoint Academy Recording Arts Department Adds World-Class Composer and Educator Miguel Kertsman

Miguel Kertsman


Miguel Kertsman was born in Recife, Brazil, and grew up in a European home, surrounded by traditional Western classical music as well as the multi-ethnic music and rhythms of Northeastern Brazil.

In 1984 he was awarded The Oscar Peterson Jazz Masters Incentive Award and The Berklee Professional Music Scholarship to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston, from where he graduated in record time in 1986. He studied conducting with Attilio Poto at the Boston Conservatory, and composition with Jeronimas Kacinkas and later Stanley Wolfe at Juilliard.

His first symphonic work, "Amazonia", written at age 19 in 1985, was performed by orchestras across Brazil, among others at Bienal in Rio de Janeiro, in Sao Paolo and at the international IDRIART festival, conducted by the late Eleazar de Carvalho.

Early performances of his chamber music and jazz works were presented by Carnegie's Weill Hall, the Knitting Factory and BargeMusic in New York while more recently two of Kertsman's symphonic works and his flute concerto saw performances and recordings with conductor Dennis Russell Davies and as soloist Vienna Philharmonic's principal flutist Wolfgang Schultz in Austria and Slovakia - the commission of a second flute concerto by Marina Piccinini and the Austrian Flute Society premiered at Vienna's Konzerthaus in late 2005.

That year Kertsman's two short interactive works for children, "Fidelio" and "The Wandering Troubadour" for children's opera were premiered on the Opera Viva series at the Herbert von Karajan Centrum, and subsequently saw performances at the Zurich Opera, the Philharmonie Luxembourg and the Beethovenhalle in Bonn, Germany. In 2006 his work "Stop It", inspired by the ongoing unrest in the Middle East, was premiered in Chicago.

Miguel Kertsman's music has been recorded and released on Sony Classical (the album "Amazonica" and the song "Cantiga de Ninar" with mezzo Angelika Kirchschlager), and BMG (on the Electronica album "Rhythmic Fission"), featured at the Expo 2000 in Lisbon, licensed to television on various MTV and nature programs, and some of his works are filed as part of Brazil's heritage at the National Library. His music has been consistently featured on the radio and television internationally, including interviews and playlists on various NPR stations across the U.S., ABC Australia, various German Public Radio stations, RFI France, Radio Cultura Brazil, the ORF in Austria in addition to frequent broadcasts in many other countries world wide.

Kertsman's works are published in sheet music by Universal Edition, Kossack Edition Germany and his own Amazonica Music, New York.

After having lived in London and Vienna for a number of years, he recently returned to the U.S., and is currently working on a concerto for violin and orchestra, an opera, and a bassoon concerto.


Recent Works:

Chamber Symphony No.1 "Boa Viagem Shoreline"
Sinfonia Concertante for Flute and Orchestra
"Rhythmic Fission"
"Stop It" for bass and cello
"Fidelio" and "The Wandering Troubador" (two short interactive works for children)
Concerto for Flute, Strings and Percussion