October 5, 2011
Two men, two pianos: Taborn and Burns perform in Brechemin
Craig Taborn and Gust Burns, two leaders of east and west coast piano innovation debut their new collaborative two-pianos project at 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 15, in Brechemin Auditorium.
Both contributing compositions and combining their respective approaches to post-jazz virtuosity and musicality, Taborn and Burns supply a contemporary voice to the tradition of two-piano jazz improvisation.
Born in Minnesota, Taborn has been performing piano and electronic music in the jazz, improvisational, and creative music scenes for 20 years. Jazz Times has called him “perhaps the most influential keyboard sideman of the past 15 years.”
Taborn currently leads the Craig Taborn Trio, Junk Magic, and the Ancients and Moderns ensemble, and is a member of progressive noise/punk band The Gang Font and the instrumental pop group Golden Valley.
Burns is a pianist, improviser, and composer based in Seattle. 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. He 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 was the 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.
The concert is free. Taborn will also lead a clinic with UW jazz students at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 13, in Room 35, Music. The clinic is free and open to the public.
