From San Jose Mercury News
Man killed by BART train was UC-Berkeley composer
By Robert Salonga
Renowned composer and University of California-Berkeley associate professor Jorge Liderman died Sunday morning after being struck by a BART train in an apparent suicide, authorities said.
His death came one day before a scheduled world premiere of a concerto, an event that was transformed into a memorial event in San Francisco.
Liderman, a music professor at Berkeley since 1989, was long celebrated for contemporary music that was emotional as well as intellectual. The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players touted the premiere in advance as a "compelling new concerto."
The group went ahead with the performance Monday night at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum. Liderman, who was 50, titled his concerto "Furthermore."
"Jorge Liderman's death has stunned all of us," said executive director Adam Frey on the Contemporary Music Player's blog Monday. He said he and the musicians had learned of Liderman's death before a rehearsal Sunday afternoon before an invited audience of about 60 people.
Liderman was killed by a Richmond-bound train at 9:42 a.m. Sunday at the El Cerrito Plaza station.
The conductor told investigators that Liderman was the only person on the platform and jumped in front of the train when it was about five feet away, said BART spokesman Linton Johnson.
The Contra Costa County Coroner's Office said that an autopsy did not reveal any natural causes, such as a heart attack or stroke, to explain how Liderman might have fallen into the path of the oncoming train. Johnson said an investigation into the death is ongoing.
Liderman's career was celebrated Nov. 18 at a 50th birthday concert in Hertz Hall on the Berkeley campus.
"It was a wonderful concert and Jorge, I think, was delighted," said Robert Cole, the Cal Performances director who knew Liderman for nearly 20 years.
Born in Buenos Aires, Liderman began playing and writing music as a child, later studying at the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem. In 1988 he received his doctorate in composition from the University of Chicago, and a year later he joined the composition faculty at UC-Berkeley.
His works have been performed by orchestras worldwide, and in 2003 he won a Guggenheim Latin American and Caribbean Fellowship Award. He has a dozen recordings to his credit.
Liderman's music has been described as sophisticated and primal, imaginative and uncompromising.
His works include string quartets, a collaborative work based on "The Song of Songs," and another major vocal work, the opera "Antigona Furiosa."
He was often praised for making contemporary music accessible.
"We've been living in a ghetto of composers writing music for other composers," he said during a 2005 interview before taking part in the Berkeley Edge Fest. His goal, he said, was "to write music that is visceral, that can move you not just intellectually but also emotionally and physically. I think something has to grab you on a subconscious level." |
