James Bergin

James Bergin is a composer, conductor, violist and teacher. His compositions include tonal and microtonal works for solo instruments, voice and chamber ensemble, chorus, piano and organ. 

He entered the New England Conservatory of Music as a performance major in viola in 1971, but left the following year to study music privately.  He was a viola student of George Neikrug for four years; studied solfege with Albert Yves Bernard (longtime member of the Boston Symphony); piano with Maria  Bono; and voice with Maria diStefano. 

His composition studies were with NEC faculty member Joseph Maneri,  a student of Josef Schmid (one of Alban Berg's first pupils in Vienna, who had emigrated to New York in the during World War II).  Bergin studied harmony, species counterpoint, and motet,  using Arnold Schoenberg's Theory of Harmony, Preliminary Exercises in Counterpoint, and Models for Beginners in Composition. Although Schoenberg was not able to publish texts for the continuation of his course, Bergin was able to continue with intensive studies in contrapuntal modulation and 4- and 5-voice fugue due to Maneri's own extended studies with Schmid.

In 1991 he returned to NEC to complete a degree in music theory with Maneri as his principal teacher. He concentrated on the study of microtones, began composing in 72-note equal temperament, and studied theory, orchestration, and ethnomusicology with Daniel Pinkham, Robert Cogan, Lee Hyla, and Robert Labaree.  

Since 2006, he has been the executive director of the Boston Microtonal Society http://www.bostonmicrotonalsociety.org and the conductor of its permanent chamber ensemble NotaRiotous, dedicated to the performance of microtonal music on traditional instruments. He was the conductor of the Junior Youth Chamber Orchestra (now called the Youth Repertory Orchestra) at the New England Conservatory of Music, for whom he commissioned and conducted pieces by composers Gary Philo, Thomas Oboe Lee, and Ezra Sims (whose piece used pitches as small as a 1/12 tone). 

He was a frequent performer in the Composers in Red Sneakers concerts in the 1980s, and has improvised microtonally with Joe Maneri, Mat Maneri, Noah Kaplan, and others. He currently plays viola in the Berkshire Symphony at Williams College.

He lives in western  Massachusetts, where he works for the music publishing firm Broude Brothers Limited, composes, performs, and teaches violin and viola on a private basis.