Deborah Bradley-Kramer
pianist / educator
Deborah Bradley-Kramer Ph.D, a graduate of New York University and the European Mozart Academy, was Lecturer in Music at Columbia University from 1999-2019, and was the Director of Music Performance at Columbia University from 1999-2013. She is Lecturer in Music at The Juilliard School, where she teaches courses in World and American Music. She is founding Head of School MUSE Academy, an Independent Pre-K-12 school in Brooklyn dedicated to integrating a rich and diverse arts curriculum within a rigorous academic program. She is founder and pianist of The Moebius Ensemble, a group dedicated to championing American music and works of emerging composers in America and beyond, and SPEAKmusic, a collective of Columbia and Juilliard musicians and faculty who are dedicated to enlivening the world of classical music through innovative programming and interactive audience experiences. Moebius has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including Copland, Koussevitzky, Trust for Mutual Understanding and Arts International grants to fund several tours of Eastern Europe. They have presented European premieres of Martin Bresnick, Duncan Neilson, Aaron Kernis, Fred Lerdahl, Jonathan Kramer, Sebastian Currier, Bruce Adolphe, Morton Feldman, Paul Schoenfield, and Lou Harrison among many others.
While Director of Columbia’s Music Performance Program, Ms. Bradley-Kramer established the program’s principal operating budget, increased the number of students in chamber ensembles by 200%, and created budget lines for numerous new endeavors such as Columbia New Music, Columbia Sounds, Early Music Columbia, groups in residence (including an ensemble to perform undergraduate composers’ pieces), Klezmer Band, and the annual Weill Hall Gala concert to name a few. In 2004 she established the Jonathan D. Kramer Memorial Fund for Young Composers in memory of her late husband, long time Columbia University faculty member, composer and music theorist Jonathan D. Kramer.
Nominated for a Great Teacher award, Ms. Bradley-Kramer has taught in Columbia’s Department of Music since 1999 in courses that range from Music Humanities, a course required of all Columbia students, to Russian and Jewish Music, Piano Literature, and Duo-Piano. A dedicated pedagogue, she has given talks on American contemporary music, postmodern performance, and contemporary Russian Music at such institutions as The Juilliard School, New York University’s Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russian, Moscow Conservatory, St. Petersburg Conservatory, Jerusalem Rubin Academy of Music and Dance, Taipei National School of the Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Royal Irish Conservatory of Music; she also gave a talk on the importance of teaching Music in Columbia’s Core Curriculum at the United Nations. She also contributed to several radio and film projects on classical music for WWFM, WKCR, NDTV (Chinese TV station) and on a documentary about Czech harpsichordist Zuzana Ruzickova for Getzel Gordon Productions.
In 2016 she presented invited papers at the College Music Societies (Northeast and Southern Chapters) and at the International Society for the Study of Time at University of Edinburgh.
Her solo piano performances range from Baroque music and improvisation, to contemporary music, including premieres of compositions written for her by composers Boris Tishchenko, Duncan Neilson, Jonathan Kramer, and Chason Goldschmitz among others. In 2016 with Daedalus Quartet and SPEAKmusic, she gave performances at the 92nd Street Y's new SoundSpace series, the Roerich Museum, Klavierhaus, Czech Center of New York, The Salon in Philadelphia, and at Columbia’a Harriman Institute. Ms. Bradley-Kramer will present a series of concerts in 2019 which pair fugues of Bach with those of Shostakovich, Slonimsky and works of contemporary composers in a postmodern soundscape. In Spring 2016 at New York’s 92nd Street Y along with the Daedalus Quartet and members of SPEAKmusic, she premiered the works Jacob Weinberg, pioneering member of the Russian Society for Jewish Folk Music (1908-1919). She also gave concert-lectures on contemporary piano music at Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, Lodz Academy of Music, Academy of Performing Arts of Music in Prague, Royal Irish Conservatory, the United Nations, Hartt School of Music, University of Chicago, and College Music Society In addition, she has presented talks on Russian music at New York University and at the Roerich Museum.
In 2012 she formed SPEAKmusic, a collective of Columbia and Juilliard musicians and composers who are dedicated to opening the world of classical music – especially that of contemporary composers - to audiences young and old. Equally dedicated to outreach, they have performed at local schools, for TimeIn NY, and toured Poland in 2016 as part of Musica Moderna offering a concert program titled “An American Menagerie.” In 2019, they will embark on a series of projects with young musicians and faculty of the Kenya Conservatoire. SPEAKmusic will donate several instruments to the orchestra of the conservatory, and through various creative collaborative enterprises, raise awareness for local environmental causes.
In 2022, she will inaugurate a unique new concert series with Sujatri Reisinger at Klavierhaus, and will also collaborate on a new interdisciplinary music and art series at The Centre for The Future in Slavonice, Czech Republic.
Ms. Bradley-Kramer's White Buffalo Salon continues to flourish, and has featured such composers as John Luther Adams, Payton MacDonald, and Duncan Neilson; artists the Daedalus Quartet, Noe Venable, Reiko Uchida, and Tom Meglioranza; writers Benjamin Stark, Mirta Ojito, and Oscar Hijuelos.
Deborah Bradley-Kramer’s CD of Jonathan Kramer’s chamber music with piano is forthcoming on the Leonarda label, and. her essay on performing Postmodern piano music appears in Jonathan Kramer’s Postmodern Music, Postmodern Listening (Bloomsbury Press, 2016).
Research interests include Baroque Music, postmodern music, improvisation, fugue, Russian avant-garde of Silver Age, lost generation of Czech composers from the Holocaust, Russian Jewish Folk Music Society, Russian and Bulgarian folk music, constructivism, surrealism, Russian and Czech poetry, film, and literature, Rom music of Central and Eastern Europe, music and memory, and music pedagogy.
Courses taught at Columbia AND JUILLIARD:
Russian Music from Glinka to Gubaydulina
Soviet Music and Musicians
American Roots Music
Jewish Music from Biblical Times to Present
Sounds of the Silk Road (with members of Silk Road Ensemble)
Piano Literature
Music Humanities (Masterpieces of Western Music)
Music of the Roaring 20’s
Brief History of Musical Theater
The Story of New York’s Yiddish Theater
