Burton Greene

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Burton Greene

Narada Burton Greene (born June 14, 1937 as Burton Garrett Greene in Chicago , Illinois , † June 28, 2021 in Amsterdam , Netherlands ) was an American jazz pianist who explored both avant-garde jazz and klezmer .

Live and act

Greene, whose mother was a classical pianist, studied classical music in Chicago from 1944 to 1951 at the Fine Arts Academy, then from 1955 to 1956 modern jazz with Dick Marx , and then performed with Billy Green and Ira Sullivan . He moved to New York City in the early 1960s . It was part of the free jazz scene there in the early 1960s . With Alan Silva he founded the Free Form Improvisation Ensemble in 1963 , which devoted itself to free improvisation from an early age. In 1964, like Bill Dixon and Cecil Taylor, he was a founding member of the Jazz Composers' Guild. The following year he formed his own quartet with Marion Brown and Henry Grimes . He played with Rashied Ali , Albert Ayler , Gato Barbieri , Byard Lancaster , Sam Rivers and Patty Waters and recorded several albums for the avant-garde label ESP-Disk before heading to Asia and then Europe in 1969. After a short stay in Paris , he has since lived in Amsterdam . In Europe he first worked with musicians such as John Tchicai , Johnny Dyani , Archie Shepp ( Poem for Malcolm , 1969), Anthony Braxton , Maarten Altena or Willem Breuker , but also with Gong . In addition, he dealt extensively with synthesizers . In 1978 he recorded two albums under his own name for the Cologne label Circle Records , Structures in a quartet with saxophonist Keshavan Maslak and the solo album European Heritage . In 1980 the duo album The Ongoing was created with Alan Silva on HatHut Records .

During the 1980s he began to deal with the klezmer tradition from the perspective of jazz music and founded the group Klezmokum , in which he performed regularly with Perry Robinson (then the quartet The Klezzthetics as a smaller formation in 2003 ). Greene has also worked with Ernst Reijseger , as well as with Lou Grassi and Wilber Morris in a trio ( Throptics on CIMP , 1998). Greene died in Amsterdam on June 28, 2021 at the age of 84.

Discographic notes

Lexical entry

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Derek Taylor: Greene / Silva / Friedman / Winter / Walker: Free Form Improvisation Ensemble . In: All About Jazz , February 1, 2000 (English)
  2. ↑ Nate Chinen: Burton Greene, Pioneering Free Jazz Pianist, Dies at 84th WBGO , June 29, 2021, accessed June 29, 2021 .
personal data
SURNAME Greene, Burton
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Greene, Narada Burton (full name); Greene, Burton Garrett (maiden name)
SHORT DESCRIPTION American jazz pianist
DATE OF BIRTH June 14, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago , Illinois
DATE OF DEATH June 28, 2021
Place of death Amsterdam , Netherlands