Interview: Gary Burton – Jazz Musician, Educator
GARY BURTON is a jazz vibraphonist, composer and jazz educator. Burton developed a pianistic style of four-mallet technique as an alternative to the prevailing two-mallet technique. He has been heralded as an innovator and his sound and technique are widely imitated. He is also known for pioneering fusion jazz and popularizing the duet format in jazz, as well as being a major figure in music education due to his 33 years of teaching at the Berklee College of Music, and his many years of service as executive vice president of Berklee.
Burton has recorded over 60 albums and won 7 Grammy Awards. Beginning in the 1960s, when he was still a teenager, Gary has performed with almost every major jazz musician.
Burton wrote a wonderful autobiography titled Learning to Listen: The Jazz Journey of Gary Burton: An Autobiography that was published in 2013, and is available through www.amazon.com. The book won the Best Book of the Year 2014 award from the Jazz Journalists Association.
The videos below are organized by topic and run between 30 seconds to 6 minutes. Click on any video. You must be connected to the Internet to view the videos.
SEIZE THE MOMENT – 5:20 min.
WORK HARD – 1:12 min.
INFLUENCE OF CRITICS – 4:09 min.
CRITICAL THINKING – 3:10 min.
CREATIVITY & FLEXIBILITY – 3:19 min.
COLLABORATION – 2:38 min.
OVERCOMING CHALLENGES – 5:38 min.
SKILL DEVELOPMENT – 4:34 min.
LEARN FROM THE ARTISTS – 1:11 min.
TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS – 0:52 sec.
INFLUENTIAL CRITICS – 1:27 min.
EXCELLENT WRITING – 0:34 sec.