Artist Statement
I have always been fascinated by the interplay of sounds and learned when I was eleven that – not surprisingly – I had perfect pitch. Sounds comfort, communicate, and create moments of both dissonance and peace. As a teenager who has had epilepsy since I was very young, I have often relied on sounds and music to offer me pockets of comfort and peace. I find inspiration from places that provide refuge in my imagination, such as nature and faraway lands, as well as objects I love, like clocks and antiques. Many of my pieces convey the duality of living with epilepsy: from the challenges to the hope and resilience.
Hailed as “innovative… unique… an exceptionally gifted composer” by the Indie Film Music Contest, with a style compared to Bartok, Messiaen, and Arvo Pärt, Kiefer Bernard (b. 2007) received the top prizes for classical composition in the 2022 National Association for Music Educators student competition, the 2024 National Federation of Music Clubs Junior Composer (NJ), and the 2023 New Jersey PTA Reflections competitions. He has studied composition, theory, ear training, music production, and electroacoustic composition at Boston Conservatory of Berklee, Tanglewood Summer Institute (BUTI), University of North Carolina School of the Arts, and Juilliard Extension. In 2026, he was profiled as a composer on NPR’s “From the Top”, and his pieces have been performed by the Dolphins Quartet, the Frahm-Lewis Trio, the Semiosis Quartet, the New Thread Quartet, and the Emissary Quartet. He is a composition major at Mannes Prep at The New School and studies composition privately with Meng Wang (DMA Cincinnati) and Max Grafe (DMA Juilliard).
FTT hereby grants Composer access to From Light To Dark In The Valley from the recording session that took place on March 18, 2026, at Berklee College of Music.
SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-433215316
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