Eli Berman

Eli Berman (she/they) is a vocalist, composer, producer and new instrument builder from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She creates electro-acoustic music using extended vocal techniques that weave together khazones (Ashkenazi Jewish cantorial music), Yiddish and Appalachian folk song and western classical repertoire for countertenor, baritone and choirs. Over the past five years, Berman has been developing her “vocal feedback pipes,” a series of feedback instruments that extend the human voice using amplified plastics and metals modulated by digital effects. She has also begun to create club music entirely from processed samples of her voice as a founding member of Kleztronica, a burgeoning rave scene that mixes house and techno with Jewish folk and liturgical music. Berman has performed nationally and internationally at venues such as the Neues Nationalgalerie (Berlin, Germany), National Sawdust, Sultan Room, Watermill Center, Banff Centre, Princeton University, Dartmouth College, the New School, New Music On the Point, Yiddish Summer Weimar, New Explorative Oratorio Voice Festival, Atlantic Music Festival and Gender Unbound.

The David C. and Thelma G. Driskell Award for Creative Excellence, created in partnership with the University of Maryland’s Arts for All initiative, is designed to provide emerging scholars and artists with access to The Driskell Center’s collections in order to conduct new research or create new artistic work that furthers the Center’s mission of expanding and deepening the field of African diasporic studies in the visual arts.