Music:
Member Since: 10/10/2006
Band Website: http://www.burtner.net/
Band Members: As a composer and sound artist I create music for other performers, usually specifically commissioned by an ensemble or soloist or festival. I have had the priviledge to work with many internationally recognized performers. The direction and scope of my music is indebted in some way to the influences of each of these artists.
Some of these include the Peabody Trio (US), Phyllis Bryn-Julson (US), Trio Ascolto (Germany), Haleh Abghari (US), CrossSound (Alaska), MiN Ensemble (Norway), Ensemble Noise (US), Torleif Torgersen (Norway), Trio Chiaroscuro (Netherlands), Dorothea von Albrecht (Germany), Haim Avitsur (Isreal), Morris Palter (Canada), Dimitris Marinos (Greece), Wu Wei (Germany), Jim Wilson and Carston Schmidt (US), Madeleine Shapiro (US), Tabatha Easley (US), Incantation Saxophone Quartet (France), Asuka Ito (Japan), Doug Perkins of SO Percussion (US), Duo Archeopteryx (Belgium), Hugh Livingston (US), John Sampen's BGSU Sax Ensemble (US), Havana Saxophone Quartet (Cuba), New Orleans Philharmonic (US), Bodo Sinfonietta (Norway), Christopher Jones (US), Idith Meshulam (US), Amsterdam Saxophone Ensemble (Netherlands), Craig Hultgren (US), Ensemble Intercontemporain (France), SIRIUS Ensemle (US), Patricia Green (US), Eighth Blackbird (US), Rebecca Van der Post (UK), Mark Markam (US), Alison Potter (US), David Wetzel (US), Kevin Winkler (US), Paul Pulford (Canada), Aglika Angelova (Bulgaria), New Horizons Ensemble (US), Mark Markam (US), Spectri Sonori (US), Griffin Campbell (US)."
Influences: My primary influences are the sounds fom the natural world, especially those of harsh northern environments I experienced growing up in Alaska. The sounds of wind, snow, the ocean and ice are important musical influences for me.
Other influences from the natural world include the sounds of seals, seagulls, whales, ice flows and glaciers, cosmic background radiation, auroral choruses, atmospheric whistlers, the sound of sand, and earthquakes.
I am influenced by the places I have been:
Sounds Like: "There is weather in his compositions, as well as landscape: open, brooding, sometimes ominous, often wintry....His compositions have a way of insinuating themselves into your mind. Listen to them enough and you begin to think and take in the world as he does. You hear a gust of wind or the far-off sound of machinery and you think that sounds like something from a Burtner composition."
- Dale Keiger, Johns Hopkins Magazine
“Saxophonist, sound artist and composer, Matthew Burtner takes part of his inspiration from the savage beauty of his home, Alaska. Mixing with the sensibility of a derviche he combines the mystical harmonics of Tibetan prayer bowels, electronic and acoustic undulations and a counterpoint of stones into the music he imagines as –windcantations-. In order to most faithfully translate his incredible visions , he also created an original instrument. The metasaxophone, is a tenor sax branched into a microprocessor and an independent computer, permitting him to filter and modulate the sounds during performance. Imbedded in the cliffs of the Sarine, the Grotte du Pertuis gave an in intimate atmosphere to the mystical evocation of a magician of sonorous spaces.â€
La Liberte, Fribourg, Switzerland
Windcantations, Matthew Burtner by MAP
"For all the noise that makes up the core of this music, it is not only a thoroughly fascinating listening experience, but a curiously relaxing one - heck! when he's not building sonic monstrosities that could tear down the walls on Skull Island with one fell swoop, there are plenty of long moments here when his sound might blend well with the friction-less glistening glide of VIDNA OBMANA. When it does make the rare journey into rhythmic, full-frontal music, it uses all the power it can muster, creating an all-out barrage of rhythmic drumming spangled with a more traditional sax approach. One long piece here manages to be immensely busy, yet not so complex or abrasive as not to be easy to relax while listening to. Another piece pushes the edges into the discordant extremities of Japanese Noise - a cavorting angry discord which almost rivals ZORN's abrasive powerhouse approach. This is a complex album which ranges from one extreme to the other, yet always manages to be, well, extreme. "
Metamorphic Journeyman Online Magazine
Review of Metasaxophone Colossus
"Matthew Burtner has created a work of austere beauty in his new recording of six compositions for saxophones, computer generated sound, and stones. From the first moment, it is clear that Burtner's music reflects a unique and powerful imagination. His saxophone writing is timbral in essence, collaborating with but never mimicking his computer generated sounds. His computer generated sounds (often granular synthesis), in turn, draw from a well parallel to that of his acoustic sounds in their organic feel and sense of otherworldy spaciousness. This may well be reflect Burtner's grounding in the Alaskan geography and climate. "
EMF's CDemusic
CD Review of Portals of Distortion
"Sikuigvik evokes ice crystals and wind that transform into a blinding light. You can sense bird song, running water, waves, and an overwhelming movement!"
Nordlandsposten, Narvik, Norway
Review of Sikuigvik by Jorgen Mathisen
"Trying to take in the vastness of computer pieces like Fern, it's hard to avoid thinking of the Alaskan wilderness, where Burtner spent his youth. This uses the digital granular synthesis developed by the composer at Xenakis's UPIC studios in Paris. Burtner's own philosophy of music aims to fuse technology and organic constituents, most elementally in Mists for computer noise controller and stone trio, where levels of filtered noise blur the polyrhythmic striking stones. The equally compelling saxophone pieces occasionally break out into something like a free jazz solo. Some of the most eerily effective electroacoustic music I've heard. "
The Wire, London, England
Andy Hamilton review of Portals of Distortion
Record Label: Innova
Type of Label: Indie
