GARY BURTON AT 70: LANDMARK YEAR WITH
NEW ALBUM, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, AND TOUR
Album:
The New Gary Burton Quartet - Guided Tour,
Available August 20 on Mack Avenue Records
Autobiography:
LEARNING TO LISTEN: The Jazz Journey of Gary Burton,
Available September 3 on Berklee Press
12-City U.S. Tour in September/October
A popular phrase in years past was "Life Begins at 60," but Gary Burton - as he has done so often throughout his career - is
re-writing the book on retirement. Having turned 70 in January, an age
when most artists begin to solely look back, Burton forges ahead with
his new Mack Avenue Records album, Guided Tour (available August 20, 2013), which solidifies the reputation of his next great band, The New Gary Burton Quartet. In addition, Burton has literally written the book on his life, saving those backward glances for his upcoming autobiography, LEARNING TO LISTEN: The Jazz Journey of Gary Burton (available September 3, 2013 on Berklee press).
Burton's stature as the
former Executive Vice President at the famed Berklee College of Music
caps a three-decade life in jazz education, which coincided with his
already busy career as a performer and recording artist. Known for
reintroducing and expanding the technique of four-mallet playing while
crafting one of the jazz world's signature sounds, he is also
celebrating the 40th anniversary of his ongoing collaboration with
pianist Chick Corea (winning yet another GRAMMY® Award in 2013 - his
seventh overall - for their most recent project, Hot House). And
having established the first online courses for Berklee, Burton has
recently expanded his web presence to create a course in improvisation
for Coursera (the massive online education platform), which, as of two
months before its launch, had already enrolled 25,000 students.
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| Gary Burton, Credit: Jimmy Katz |
Apart
from their own playing, many of jazz's greatest figures - Duke
Ellington, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis - are also known for the handful
of indisputably great bands they led throughout their careers. Like
them, Burton has assembled a few such Olympian groups of his own: his
first quartet, which pioneered the fusion of jazz and rock in 1967; his
quintet with Pat Metheny in the 1970s; and now this band, which achieves
a rare synergy.
"It's the difference between
playing with some excellent musicians, and finding a group chemistry
that goes beyond that - a coming together of 'sympatico' creative
minds," says Burton. "In my five decades of playing in various bands,
mostly my own groups, I have only experienced this a handful of times;
if even one player is not an equal part of the combination, it doesn't
achieve that magical state. But from the first recording of this band,
everything just clicked perfectly."
If that's how this band
started out, you can imagine how they sound now, with a year's growth
and a world tour on their resume. "I'm happy to report that our second
album is every bit as strong a statement of group identity as before,"
Burton affirms. "If anything, we have evolved as an ensemble - which is
the dream of every band leader."
Burton sought out original material from all the group's members on Guided Tour (as he did with Common Ground),
illuminating their wide range of cross-cultural musical styles. "They
outdid themselves this time," he says. "And, of course, the superb
musicianship, but with players like these, that's a given." Add in a
tour guide like Burton, and the path is clear, on an album likely to
rank among the year's best.
As he recounts in the upcoming autobiography, LEARNING TO LISTEN,
Burton was already a steadily working musician in rural Indiana in his
high school years, before heading for Nashville, recording the very
first jazz-and-country album (with guitarist Hank Garland), and scoring a
major-label record contract-all before entering the Berklee College of
Music at the age of 17, in 1960. LEARNING TO LISTEN
provides great insight into his music-making process. He tells stories
about living in Nashville and working alongside Chet Atkins and
guitarist Hank Garland; of seeing Jimi Hendrix's first New York City
performance; collaborating with Eric Clapton and members of the Eagles;
touring and recording extensively with the iconic Tango musician Astor
Piazzola and his ensemble; and even garnering a GRAMMY® nomination for
Best Classical Album with his recording Virtuosi. Burton also
writes in great detail about how he learned and then refined his skill
with improvisation, and how he creates music in the moment.
He also is one of the few
openly gay men in jazz, a genre of music that has long been identified
with a particularly masculine reputation. He first revealed this on the
NPR show "Fresh Air," after decades of keeping the secret not only from
those around him but also from himself.
LEARNING TO LISTEN
is at its heart the very human story of Burton coming to terms with who
he is as a person, struggling to find a balance between his personal,
creative and professional lives, and living his life honestly and
without regret.
"Life is a process of
getting to know oneself, and this is especially true for artists, who
struggle to find answers to so many questions," Burton writes in his
memoir. "In the case of musicians, we want to turn those answers into
song through our creative processes. And that requires learning who you
are and discovering how to have a kind of dialogue with the unconscious
self.... Looking back, it's hard to believe this gay, white, Hoosier
farm kid managed to find his way in the macho, cosmopolitan world of
Jazz."
At 70, having already led one of the most remarkable careers in music history, Gary Burton seems to be just warming up, with a landmark year in 2013.
The New Gary Burton Quartet - 70th Birthday Tour:
September 12-13 / Blues Alley / Washington, D.C.
September 14 / Lake George Jazz Weekend - Shepard Park / Lake George, NY
September 15 / Plymouth State University - Silver Center For The Arts / Plymouth, NH
September 17 - 22 / The Blue Note / New York, NY
September 24 / The College of Saint Rose - Massry Center for the Arts / Albany, NY
September 26 / Univ. of Connecticut - Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts / Storrs, CT
September 27-28 / Scullers Jazz Club / Boston, MA
September 29 / University of Rhode Island / Kingston, RI
October 2-3 / Dakota Jazz Club & Restaurant / Minneapolis, MN
October 4 / SPACE - Society for the Preservation of Art & Culture Evanston / Evanston, IL
October 5 / Manchester Craftsmen's Guild / Pittsburgh, PA
October 6 / Univ. of Pennsylvania - Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts / Philadelphia, PA
Special Album & Book Release Celebration:
November 12 / Berklee Performance Center / Boston, MA
The New Gary Burton Quartet · Guided Tour
Mack Avenue Records · Release Date: August 20, 2013
Gary Burton · LEARNING TO LISTEN: The Jazz Journey of Gary Burton
Berklee Press · Release Date: September 3, 2013
For more information on Gary Burton, please visit: garyburton.com
For more information on Berklee Press, please visit: berkleepress.com
For media information on
Guided Tour, Mack Avenue Records, or Gary Burton in general, please contact:
DL Media· 610-667-0501
For media information on
LEARNING TO LISTEN: The Jazz Journey of Gary Burton, please contact:
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