Tim Berens, Bio Highlights

Played classical, electric and acoustic guitars, banjo, mandolin and bouzouki in a cornucopia of musical styles in hundreds of performances at Music Hall, 35+ CDs, 5 PBS television specials, 7 Far East tours, 6 performances at Carnegie Hall, and a performance at the 2008 Olympic Games. Was regularly featured as a soloist and worked closely with many guest artists such as Kristin Chenoweth.

Naples Philharmonic Orchestra		200+ services
Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra		100+ services
National Philharmonic Orchestra		3 PBS Specials from the lawn of the United States Capitol in Washington D.C.
Philadelphia Orchestra		At Saratoga
Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra		Touring with Erich Kunzel
Shenzhen Philharmonic		Touring with Erich Kunzel
New World Symphony		Michael Tilson Thomas’s recording of “Rhapsody in Blue”
Colorado Symphony Orchestra		PBS special conducted by Marin Alsop featuring Marcus Roberts
Chinese National Opera Orchestra		At the “Egg” in Beijing.
The New York Pops		At Carnegie Hall
Many orchestras in smaller cities		Many smaller orchestras such as Dayton, Fort Wayne, and Oklahoma City have hired me when they needed an orchestral guitarist.

Highlights: Transcribed the piano part for “Rhapsody in Blue” to be played by 2 guitars, and performed Gershwin’s masterpiece 7 times with the Cincinnati Pops and other orchestras. Performed “Concierto de Aranjuez” with the Ohio Valley Symphony in 2007. Released 3 well-reviewed CDs of jazz. Performed hundreds of times in jazz clubs with small jazz ensembles, and more than 1,000 “gigs”.

Created 60+ arrangements for orchestra that have been performed by the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, the National Philharmonic Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, The New York Pops, The Los Angeles Philharmonic and more than 30 other orchestras.

I arrange, orchestrate, copy, and print scores and parts. An example of the work I do can be seen in the arrangement of the “Waltz from Up” that was commissioned by conductor Michael Krajewski and debuted by the Houston Symphony. For this project, I watched the movie Up, selected the portions of music to be used, then transcribed the orchestra score from the soundtrack recording by ear, scaling it up to full-size orchestra (triple winds, full brass and percussion) from Hollywood-size orchestra. I entered the score into Sibelius, formatted and printed the score and parts, then shipped them to Houston’s library. The arrangement worked the first time through in rehearsal and was premiered on February 5, 2010.

My orchestration made its Carnegie Hall debut when Wayne Brady performed 5 of my arrangements with The New York Pops in 2009. The New York Pops has since commissioned and performed more arrangements.

Erich Kunzel, Steven Reineke and Mary Judge trained me in the method of writing arrangements and preparing scores and parts that evolved at the Cincinnati Pops during the creation of 90+ recordings. The Cincinnati Pops method results in parts and scores that are player ready, conductor ready, soloist ready, library ready, audience ready and management ready at the first rehearsal.

Bachelor of Music, Major in Classical Guitar Performance, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.