by dan pine
staff writer
A prominent Bay Area Jewish composer died after being struck by a BART train at the El Cerrito Plaza station Feb. 3.
According to BART spokesman Linton Johnson, Jorge Liderman, 50, apparently committed suicide by throwing himself in the way of an arriving Richmond-bound train.
Johnson said the only witness to the incident was the train operator, who told investigators he saw a man standing at the edge of the platform. When the train came to within five feet, Liderman reportedly jumped onto the tracks.
A professor at U.C. Berkeley since 1989, Liderman was a well-known composer of modern classical music. He received commissions from various ensembles, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Sinfonietta and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players.
Over his career, Liderman wrote many pieces with Jewish themes, among them “Aires de Sefarad-46 Sephardic Songs”; “B’reshit,” a chamber piece commissioned by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s woodwind quintet; “T’phila,” a piece for solo clarinet; and “Yzkor,” a piece for string quartet and cantor arrangement.
He also wrote an opera based on Sophocles’ “Antigone” that was set in 1970s Argentina during the rule of a fascist junta.
Born to an Argentine Jewish family in 1957, Liderman attended the Rubin Academy of Music in Jerusalem. He later relocated to the United States to further his studies at the University of Chicago. He then joined the music department at U.C. Berkeley, where he remained for the rest of his career.
Jorge Liderman is survived by his wife, Mimi, of El Cerrito.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California