gust burns


seattlecontact




listen:


solo piano: 4 jazz standards
 recorded live, gallery 1412, seattle, 4 november 2011.




recordings from piano re-construction residency at open space, victoria bc:

solo piano performance, march 1.

recording of solo de-tuned piano, march 2.

recording of another de-tuned piano solo, march 2.

final solo performance on newly constructed inside piano, march 6.




stereo recording of sound installation collaboration with poet melanie noel.
4 turntables, 2 with inside piano recordings on dubplates, 2 with poetry recordings on dubplates.
recording taken after approximately 80 plays on each plate.




Gust Burns is a pianist, improviser, and composer based in Seattle, Washington. Gust is foremost an improvising pianist. He continues to develop new routes into improvisation on the piano, working with diverse areas of music such as silence, density, structure and alternative narrative approaches, extending traditional piano technique, and developing new techniques for inside the piano. Burns performs on both traditional piano - playing the keyboard - and ‘inside piano’ or re-assembled and altered piano soundboard and strings, with or without electronics. Burns counts diverse perspectives and lines of tradition as influences. Both jazz and classical traditions, the avant-garde lineages in Europe and America, the traditions of improvised music over the last 40 years, traditional musics from around the world, the hip-hop and grunge he grew up with… However, he does not attempt to assimilate these influences/ interests into one melting-pot musical identity. Instead, he seeks to further develop a relevant vocabulary and identity within several different areas of contemporary Improvisation.
Burns was also director of the Seattle Improvised Music Festival from 2003 - 2011, and co-founder of gallery 1412, a Seattle music space dedicated to new and experimental music and sound. In the Northwest, Burns has long-standing collaborations with Improvisers including Tyler Wilcox, Wally Shoup, Jeff Johnson, Tim DuRoche, and many others. He has performed and recorded with musicians and artists from North America and abroad including Keith Rowe, Radu Malfatti, Andrea Neumann, Tetuzi Akiyama, Stéphane Rives, Jason Kahn, Michael Pisaro, John Edwards, Caroline Kraabel, Lori Freedman, Wade Matthews, rapper Adam ‘Dose One’ Drucker, Jack Wright, and many others.