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MIDORI PREMIERES DEREK BERMEL’S SPRING CADENZAS ON NEW ORCHID CLASSICS RECORDING
Violinist’s pandemic-era initiative brought young musicians together through remote performance
Featuring A Far Cry, musicians from Project STEP, and conductor Earl Lee
Today, August 28, 2026, Orchid Classics releases Spring Cadenzas [ORC100481D], a digital-only EP featuring Midori in the world-premiere recording of Derek Bermel’s violin concerto. Midori performs with the Grammy-nominated chamber orchestra A Far Cry and young musicians from Boston’s Project STEP (String Training Education Program), conducted by Earl Lee.
Midori commissioned Spring Cadenzas for her Orchestra Residencies Program during the Covid-19 pandemic, when young musicians around the country had abruptly lost the ability to rehearse and perform together. Conceived as a way to sustain connection, creativity, and musical development during that period of isolation, the work transformed the limitations of online performance—including latency (the delay created when musicians in different locations attempted to play together online)—into essential elements of its musical design.
The concerto’s first version was premiered in spring 2021 by Midori and six youth orchestras across the United States using Zoom and Cleanfeed. Midori always envisioned a life for the work beyond its online premiere. As in-person music-making resumed, Bermel expanded its orchestration, leading to the studio version heard on this recording.
ABOUT SPRING CADENZAS
The idea for Spring Cadenzas grew out of Midori’s concern for young musicians whose musical education had been disrupted by the pandemic. Ensemble playing, close listening, tuning, rehearsal, and personal interaction—the foundations of orchestral development—had suddenly become difficult or impossible.
Bermel recalls:
“Midori wrote me in the fall of 2020 to ask for a concerto to perform as part of her Orchestra Residencies Program. I knew that she was passionately devoted to education. But at this moment the whole world faced a particular challenge; COVID-19 was raging internationally, and all the facets normally comprising a student’s music education—tuning, ensemble playing, interaction with others—had disappeared in a flash.
“Midori was concerned that youth orchestras were not getting a chance to rehearse and perform together. She and I discussed whether we could—in this moment—place community back at the fulcrum of music-making, finding ways for young musicians to continue honing their listening skills remotely and without access to expensive hardware and software.”
One of the greatest obstacles to remote ensemble performance was latency. Bermel chose to embrace that instability. He constructed the concerto around a series of cadenzas in which Midori’s playing could serve as a musical anchor, allowing the work to continue even when the other performers fell out of alignment.
The original orchestration also responded to the technical limits of online performance. A finite number of musicians could participate simultaneously without overloading internet connections, so the opening movement was written for strings, the finale for winds, and the central movement for Midori alone.
Inspired by three haiku by Matsuo Bashō, Spring Cadenzas unfolds in three continuous movements. Each contributes to the work’s overall dramatic arc while forming a distinct narrative of its own. Bermel characterizes the music as moving from “bubbling arpeggios tempered with an icy octatonic retort” to “a sighing, stretching melody colored by a descending chromatic bass,” followed by gestures that are “at first snaky and searching, then hovering, jittery, fluttering.”
Bermel writes that he composes “for instrumentalists, rather than instruments.” Spring Cadenzas is shaped above all by Midori’s “extraordinary artistry, brilliant technique, and inquisitive yet exacting nature,” as well as by her commitment to making music a source of connection and growth for younger musicians.
ABOUT MIDORI
Midori is a visionary artist, activist, and educator who explores and builds connections between music and the human experience. In the four decades since her debut with the New York Philharmonic at age 11, she has performed with many of the world’s most prestigious orchestras and collaborated with renowned musicians including Leonard Bernstein, Isaac Stern, and Yo-Yo Ma.
Committed to expanding the violin repertoire, Midori has worked with composers including Brett Dean, Derek Bermel, and Detlev Glanert, with future collaborations including Thierry Escaich and Jörg Widmann.
Her dedication to humanitarian and educational work is an essential part of her artistic life. Midori founded the New York City-based Midori & Friends and the Japan-based MUSIC SHARING, whose International Community Engagement Program brings music to young people in Japan and other parts of Asia.
Through her Orchestra Residencies Program, Midori supports young musicians through hands-on artistic collaborations that emphasize creativity and development over competition. This work has led to commissions including Spring Cadenzas for ORP and a series of interactive pieces by Hannah Ishizaki for MUSIC SHARING.
In recognition of her work as an artist and humanitarian, Midori serves as a United Nations Messenger of Peace. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 2021.
Born in Osaka in 1971, Midori began studying violin with her mother, Setsu Goto, at an early age. She recently joined the faculty of the Juilliard School and is the Dorothy Richard Starling Chair in Violin Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music. She also serves as Artistic Director of the Ravinia Steans Music Institute’s Piano & Strings program.
ABOUT THE COLLABORATING ARTISTS
Derek Bermel
Composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel draws on influences ranging from classical music and jazz to hip-hop, Bulgarian folk music, and West African drumming. His performance of his clarinet concerto Voices, released on BMOP/Sound, was nominated for a Grammy Award. His discography also includes the Grammy-nominated albums Intonations, with the JACK Quartet, and Migrations, with the Albany Symphony and Juilliard Jazz Orchestra.
Bermel has received commissions from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, among others. His honors include the Alpert Award in the Arts, the Rome Prize, Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships, and the American Music Center’s Trailblazer Award. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2025.
A Far Cry
The Grammy-nominated chamber orchestra A Far Cry is known for inventive programming, close musical communication, and a democratic artistic process. Founded in 2007 on the belief that every voice deserves to be heard, the collective’s musicians—known as “Criers”—jointly develop and curate its programs.
A Far Cry has reached the top of Billboard’s Traditional Classical Albums chart. Its recordings include The Blue Hour, Stillpoint, and A Gentleman of Istanbul, all of which received Grammy nominations.
Project STEP
Project STEP is a nationally recognized Boston-based nonprofit organization founded in 1982. It advances excellence and equity in classical music by providing rigorous training and performance opportunities to talented young musicians from communities historically underrepresented in the field.
Earl Lee
Winner of the 2022 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award, Korean-Canadian conductor Earl Lee has led ensembles including the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra.
As Music Director of the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, Lee has developed programming that bridges tradition and innovation. An advocate for contemporary repertoire, he has collaborated with composers including Unsuk Chin, Donghoon Shin, Katherine Balch, Carlos Simon, and Tod Machover.
TRACK LIST
Derek Bermel (b. 1967)
Spring Cadenzas
I. fields, mountains — 5:46
II. wake, butterfly — 6:31
III. unknown spring — 5:16
Total time: 17:33
Midori, violin
A Far Cry with musicians from Project STEP
Earl Lee, conductor
Spring Cadenzas
Orchid Classics
ORC100481D
Digital release: August 28, 2026