Bio/Resume/Artist Statement
BRIEF BIOS:
Extended vocalist, composer, sound/ movement/performance artist JILL BURTON was a professional ballerina, modern dancer, dance teacher/accompanist, and free improvisor in Gainesville FL during the 1970s. In 1978, she traveled to San Francisco where she met for the first time her life-long friends and collaborators Davey Williams and LaDonna Smith, and connected for the first time to a larger, world-wide community of free improvisors. She lived in Manhattan's East Village from 1981-1991 where she was very active as part of the downtown experimental music/dance/performance art scene; including co-founding, w/Rain Worthington, the band HIZOHI (which also included Jane Scarpantoni, Yuval Gabay, and Kumiko Kimoto). She has been privileged to perform with, and learn from, artists from all over the world, including the Peking Opera, the Noh Theater, and Alaska Native Tlingit dancers and storytellers. She has studied and practiced hands-on healing and energy work for over twenty years, always incorporating this into her performance work. In other words, she is a "world-class, visionary badass" who "doesn't give a flying fig for the rules". Current works in progress include Jill's INFERNO, an original a capella operetta inspired by Dante.
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"Jill Burton brings her voice and physical form as the two main tools of her trade. Her bio includes training in ballet and classical music at an early age, while having quickly developed an affinity for improvising in performance. Ms. Burton was a witness and participant in the profound cultural and interdisciplinary possibilities of the 1980′s arts renaissance that blossomed out of the then near-apocalyptic urban collapse and wholly non-commercial NYC/Lower East Side scene. While many musicians...come from that same NYC/LES arts scene, few could add something as inverted a seminal experience as Burton’s six years as musical accompanist for Pacific Northwestern Tlingit tribe storytellers in Sitka, Alaska. She has spent more than fifteen years studying and practicing non-invasive medical modalities including Reiki, Ortho-Bionomy and Sound Healing. Burton’s improvised works manifest most often in wordless vocals, seemingly constructing invisible sonic architecture, both bordering the interior of a venue and transforming those same borders into transducers carrying vibrations." ~Matt Gorney, Avant Music News
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
"Jill Burton (born 1952) is an American improviser, extended vocalist, dancer, performance artist and energy worker. Noted as one of the great foundation improvisors of America, she is also known for incorporating spiritual healing with improvised performance. Active in the American improv scene since the early 1970s, she has lived and worked all over the country, including a ten-year stint in the 1980s as part of the downtown East Village experimental arts community, and six years in Sitka, Alaska, where she worked with Tlingit storytellers providing musical accompaniment for their healing stories. Burton is unusual for a musician in that her work is ephemeral, in-the-moment, and therefore recordings of her work are rare. She has collaborated with many notable experimental musicians and dancers, including LaDonna Smith, Davey Williams, Jane Scarpantoni, Judy Dunaway, David First, Rain Worthington, Gino Robair, Jack Wright, and Scott Walton."
ARTIST STATEMENT:
I am an extended vocalist, holistic sound/movement/performance artist, composer, and energy worker currently living in Gainesville, FL. I have lived and worked as a performer and teacher all over the United States, including ten years in NYC, three years in Miami, and six years in Sitka, Alaska.
In addition to a deep background in many forms of music and dance, I have over twenty years of training and experience in hands-on healing and energy work modalities, which I incorporate into my performance work.
I'm basically an outsider artist: outside of academia, outside of the music industry or business, outside of any arts organization, outside of any localized or regional arts scene, outside of any easily named category. I find the most acceptance and recognition in the global network of free improvising musicians.
My primary art form is to improvise in the moment, using every aspect of my voice, the movement of my body, the acoustics of the physical space, and the emotions/energies/thoughtforms arising from the audience, the external world, and the deepest regions of my inner self; to embody and express universal frequencies which are common to all of humanity.
I have been developing this way of working/performing for several decades, and it keeps deepening. It is a largely non-verbal and non-linear process similar to hypnosis or a dream-like state that reveals deep inner truths through resonating all of these overlapping layers of reality.
Complete honesty, authenticity, and vulnerability are integral to my work; fun and humor are also crucial elements; full presence is key.
Has taught/performed/presented at schools/universities:
University of Alabama Tuscaloosa
University of Miami Composers' Forum
Florida State University New World Music Ensemble
University of California San Diego
Atlantic Center for the Arts
New World School of the Arts
Santa Fe College FL
University of Florida
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
Wesleyan University
MassArt (Boston)
Florida School of Massage
Foothill College CA
Southeast Alaska High School Music Conference
Has performed/taught/presented at festivals/conferences:
Outsound New Music Summit
Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival
Miami Performance Art International Festival
XFest
Bang On A Can
New Directions
New Voices
Microtonal Festival
Soundings
Sound and Substance Festival
Women in Improv Festival
Subtropics Festivals
Alaska Native Artists Summit
Alaska Folk Festival
Thompkins Square Park Festival
The Stephanie and Irving Stone Festival of Improvisors
CECI N'EST PAS UNE VOIX
Tallahassee New Music Festival
Florida Dance Festival
EDGE ZONES Performia
Art Basel Miami
Birmingham Improv Festivals
Improvisor Journal 30-Year Anniversary Festival
Santa Fe Sound Healing Conference
National Association of Arts Organizations Conference
Southeast Alaska High School Music Conference
Other venues/presenters/series include:
Gallery 109, Highwire Gallery, Luna's, Luggage Store Gallery, Meridian Gallery, Temescal Art Center, Tom's Place, Timucua, Life Cafe, Knitting Factory, Tin Pan Alley, ABC No Rio, 8BC, Art On The Beach, NPR, Sonic Frontiers, Happenings, Sheet'ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi Tribal Community House, Tampa Theater, Florida Theater, Tigertail Productions, Miami Light Project, Here and Now, Stephen Talkhouse, Harn Museum, Salvador Dali Museum, EMIT, Outsound, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Phillips Performing Arts Center, Loft Theater, CBGB's, A Mica Bunker, LaMama, Kraine, Painted Bride, Bottletree, Sloss Furnace, Birmingham Botanical Gardens, Moundsville, Barking Legs Theater, Thomas Center, Eyedrum, BAM, P.S. 122, Roulette, Pangaea, Urban ReThink, Dixon Place, 119 Gallery, Aviary Gallery, Weirdo Records, Sonorium, Whitehaus, Display, Lab, Soup'n'Sound, Freddy's Backroom, Vaudeville Park, PAXMiami, Audiotheque, Inkub8, Strange Maine, Goodbye Blue Monday, Capp Community Music Center, Edge Zones Gallery, Miami Beach Botanical Garden, Quinn's, Downtown Music Gallery, Opensound, Red Room, Spectrum, Vox Populi, Panoply Performance Lab...more
Longterm and occasional collaborators include:
Andrew Drury, Dan Peck, Andrea Pensado, Angela Sawyer, Laurie Amat, Phillip Greenlief, Moe!Staiano, Cornelius Cardew Choir, Tim Perkis, LaDonna Smith, Davey Williams, Scott Walton, Cort Lippe, Phil Gelb, Hideo Sekino, David First, Chris Cochrane, Gino Robair, Andrea Centazzo, Ryan Krause, David Grollman,
I'd M Thfft Able, David Rosenbloom, Kevin Jones, David Durant, George Lewis, Mark Feldman, Lois Dilivio, Amy Denio, Jane Scarpantoni, Rain Worthington, Kumiko Kimoto, Yuval Gabay, Jack Wright, Ned Sublette, Doug Carroll, Tom Nunn, Ron Heglin, Luciana Proano, Sally Silvers, Andrea Kane,
Ann Law, Bruce Kaplan, Kristen Garnier, Christy Sheffield Sanford, Kwong Yu Fong, RIP Hayman, Ruth Malacheck, Misha Feigin, Shakin Ray Levis, Claire Elizabeth Barratt, Judy Dunaway, Kevin Jones, Susan Hefner, Andrew Burnes, David Daniell, Scott Burland, Tatsuya Nakatani, Wade Matthews, Gustavo Matamoros, Andrew Dewar, Evan Lipson, Richard Brookens, Doug Mathews, Moksha Summer, David Dove, Michael Evans, Valerie Kuehne, Jeff Young, Emily Hay, Shelley Hirsch, Robert Dick, Shoko Nagai, Thollem McDonas, Patrick Crossland, Gordon Beeferman...more