Jeffrey Burns

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Jeffrey Burns (born August 18, 1950 in Los Angeles , California , † December 19, 2004 in Berlin ) was an American composer and pianist .

life and work

Burns, born on August 18, 1950 as the son of a Jewish businessman in Los Angeles, received piano lessons at the age of 7. He attended the Los Angeles Conservatory and studied music and mathematics at the University of California . He received his training from the pianists Jakob Gimpel , Emanuel Bay and Karl Ulrich Schnabel as well as the composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and the conductor of the former Berlin Kroll Opera Fritz Zweig . In 1972 he went to Germany as a DAAD scholarship holder. From 1977 to 1983 he taught at the University of Münster and was head of the piano department at the Steinfurt Music School . In Berlin he became one of the leading interpreters of modern piano music and campaigned intensively for modern music. From 1983 to 1986 Burns directed the Chamber Music Ensemble Berlin and taught at the École française de musique de Berlin from 1985 to 1991. In addition, from 1985 to 1991 he was director of the music programs for the Berlin Jewish Culture Days and from 1994 held the international master class for the interpretation of new piano music at the Rheinsberg Music Academy . From 1999 he also leads the new multimedia workshop at the Hanover University of Music . Since 1986 Burns has had a close friendship with the Israeli composer Josef Tal , who wrote the Essays for Piano for him.

Jeffrey Burns (l.) And Josef Tal (r.) 2004 in Berlin

Jeffrey Burns died on December 19, 2004 at the age of 54 in Berlin and found his final resting place in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee .

Projects

The Piano of Light

Burns made a special contribution to the implementation of Scriabin's color piano. Scriabin believed that there is a close relationship between tones and colors, and that every key is based on a color. Burns started the project The Piano of Light and developed a piano which, with the help of a computer, controlled 60 colored spotlights via MIDI to illuminate the tent wall surrounding the audience. The premiere took place on December 31, 1997 in Berlin.

maxsynagogue

Burns used his extensive knowledge as a mathematician and musician in a unique way when developing a computer program ( maxsynagogue ) to learn the complicated system of Jewish cantilation.

The Music of Psalms, Proverbs and Job in the Hebrew Bible

The music of the Psalms, Proverbs and Job in the Hebrew Bible: Jeffrey Burns analyzes, based on the computer program he developed, maxsynagogue, the musical structure of the “poetic books”, the Psalms, Proverbs and Job in the Hebrew Bible, whose musical notes are preserved , but are not traditional. Jeffrey Burns provided each verse with sound examples in his posthumously published solution, which can be clicked on on the enclosed CD. The book was published posthumously in 2011 by Harrassowitz-Verlag Wiesbaden.

Awards

World premieres

Discography

Treatises

  • Jeffrey Burns: From a conversation with Josef Tal . Zeitschrift für Musikpädagogik, Issue 41, September 1987 pp 3-9
  • Jeffrey Burns: With Josef Tal on Kurfürsterdamm , in IMI news 2001/1, pp. 17-20 ISSN  0792-6413

Books

Jeffrey Burns: "The Music of Psalms, Proverbs and Job in the Hebrew Bible, A Revised Theory of Musical Accents in the Hebrew Bible", Edited by David Bers and Stephen Tree, Text and CD with complete Text and Audio Files of musically reconstructed Psalms , Proverbs and Job, Sung by Computer Speech Synthesis, Harrassowitz-Verlag Wiesbaden 2011, ISBN 978-3-447-06191-9

Press

  • Georg Beck: The unpredictable stimulates the imagination: the artist Jeffrey Burns and his multimedia project “Piano of Light”. new music newspaper 2000/04 [1]
  • Personalia - pianist Jeffrey Burns; new music newspaper 2005/02 [2]
  • Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt wrote about Burns in the FAZ: "His piano playing triumphed both technically and artistically ... He is as equal an interpreter for today's music as he was for earlier generations of Schoenberg's student Eduard Steuermann."

Web links

swell

  1. ↑ Dimitri Terzakis: Complete catalog of works http://www.dohr.de/autor/terzakis.htm
personal data
SURNAME Burns, Jeffrey
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American composer and pianist
DATE OF BIRTH 18th August 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH los Angeles
DATE OF DEATH December 19, 2004
Place of death Berlin