‘Composer Derek Bermel may not be a household name yet, but if there is any justice in the music world, he soon will be. His Natural Selection, a song cycle based on poetry of Wendy S. Walters and Naomi Shihab Nye, is a group of animal portraits that achieves a dramatic complexity that belies its commonplace subject. Baritone Timothy Jones was extraordinary. He connected so completely with the text that it was easy to overlook the challenges of the score.’
Chicago Tribune (Michael Cameron), May 2006