Educated bi-lingually in West Berlin, Derek was studying musicology and art history at the TU, working on his thesis Kandinsky’s Stage Compositions, while honing his craft in the Felsenstein tradition of music-theatre, assisting Harry Kupfer on many projects. He also studied harpsichord with S. Steitz.
Derek’s experience of growing up in a divided city resonates throughout much of his work and can be seen reflected in a heightened sensitivity to the ideas of connection and dislocation. In a city with such a fragmented sense of history, the experience of time as a complex and multi-layered phenomenon is a living reality.
Derek has extensive experience in music-theatre of all periods and styles. He is particularly passionate about baroque repertoire as well Mozart and German opera. Recentlly he has been invited to the Berlin acedmy of Arts “UdK” to give classes in opera directing. In 2005 he worked for the festival de opera de Tenerife as artistic director.
Aesthetics
Derek has recently directed two large-scale music-theatre events in Berlin, using his intimate knowledge of the city to locate suitably evocative and thought provoking spaces.
In both instances, baroque music on period instruments was presented alongside a more contemporary sound world and in both, linear narrative was at times suspended, interrupted or extended to create a collage, a sensation of simultaneity and yet estrangement. This juxtaposition of sometimes seemingly disparate elements was deliberately designed to thwart the tyranny of linear time and allow for the possibility of new connections and cross-references. A theatrical application of the musical term ‘rubato’ perhaps. In these ‘robbed’ moments of time, the possibility for poetry exists.
Productions and Projects
In ‘Waiting Room’ or ‘Parallel Lines’, three Handel solo cantatas were intertwined in an emotionally charged baroque tableau, guided by short remixes played on turntables by Ignaz Schick.
For the remixes, Derek Gimpel chose to combine Handel’s music with an ingeniously varied sound palette ranging from bold, ringing rock through the incessant rhythms of Shostakovich to the meditative calm of the Indian raga. Baroque gesture was transformed in a parallel universe and brought convincingly up-to-date, without doing any violence to Handel’s music.
In ‘Schattenreich’, a baroque ensemble and the renowned new music ensemble Klangforum Wien, with soprano Sylvia Nopper, combined works of C. Monteverdi, with works of G. Grisey and A. Goehr. “Ninety minutes full of variety and contrast… overwhelmingly inspired video underscoring.., light-years ahead of the scene…”
Derek also had a great success recently with a youthful, effervescent production of Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” at the State Opera in Mersin, Turkey, in which he combined impeccable attention to detail with a lightness of touch and admirable sense of comic timing.
In a lighter vein, Derek Gimpel’s adaptation of Mozart’s “Entführung aus dem Serail“ for the touring company ‘Preussches Puppentheater’ continues in the well established tradition of repertoire opera for marionettes in Germany.
Projects currently in preparation include Gluck's Orfeo and a double-bill of “Through Roses” by M.Neikrug alongside Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire.
Derek Gimpel is fluent in five languages. His work has taken him to many opera houses around world, including Tokyo, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Bologna, Genova and others.
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