Warren Burt (born 10 October 1949) is an Australia-based composer of American birth. He is known for composing in a wide variety of new music styles, ranging from acoustic music, electroacoustic music, sound art installations, and text-based music. Burt often employs elements of improvisation, microtonality, humour, live interaction, and lo-fi electronic techniques into his music.
Warren Burt was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and attended the State University of New York, Albany (BA, 1971) and the University of California, San Diego (MA, 1975) before moving to Australia in 1975. [1]
In 1976, Burt, along with composer/performer Ron Nagorcka, established the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre, in an old Organ factory building in Gold Street, Clifton Hill, Melbourne. [2] In 1976–77, Burt toured his video/spoken/electronic opera Nighthawk in the USA. There were fourteen performances including at the University of Illinois, the Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New York, California Institute of the Arts, and Oberlin College. From 1977 to 1978 he and John Campbell produced the New and Experimental Music Show on radio 3CR. During this period, Burt and Australian composer Les Gilbert published the New Music Newspaper. [3]
In 1986 he won the Albert H. Maggs Composition Award. [1] The same year, Burt's works from his residency at International Synergy think tank in Los Angeles was shown at the American Film Institute's National Video Show, and won first prize in the computer graphics division of the 1986 Sydney International Video Show. [3]
In 2007, he completed a Ph.D. thesis, "Algorithms, Microtonality, Performance: Eleven Musical Compositions" at the University of Wollongong. Currently he lives in Daylesford, Victoria, and teaches at Box Hill Institute, Melbourne, where he is coordinator of the Masters of Music (Contemporary Practice) degree.
In 2013, Burt's video works were included in the This is Video exhibition curated by Stephen Jones as part of ISEA Symposium on electronic art. [4] Burt and Jones had collaborated on a video work in 1977 called Three Texts. [5]
Computer music is the application of computing technology in music composition, to help human composers create new music or to have computers independently create music, such as with algorithmic composition programs. It includes the theory and application of new and existing computer software technologies and basic aspects of music, such as sound synthesis, digital signal processing, sound design, sonic diffusion, acoustics, electrical engineering, and psychoacoustics. The field of computer music can trace its roots back to the origins of electronic music, and the first experiments and innovations with electronic instruments at the turn of the 20th century.
Karlheinz Essl is an Austrian composer, performer, sound artist, improviser, and composition teacher.
David Chesworth is an Australian-based interdisciplinary artist, composer and sound designer. Known for his experimental, and at times, minimalist music, he has worked solo, in post-punk groups, electronic music, contemporary ensembles and experimental performance. He has also created installation and video artworks with collaborator Sonia Leber, such as Zaum Tractor included in the 56th Venice Biennale (2015) and This Is Before We Disappear From View commissioned by Sydney Biennale (2014).
Philip Brophy, born in Reservoir, Melbourne 1959 is an Australian musician, composer, sound designer, filmmaker, writer, graphic designer, educator and academic.
Felix Werder AM was a German-born Australian composer of classical and electronic music, and also a noted critic and educator. The son of a distinguished liturgical composer, he composed all his life. His published and recorded music includes symphonies, chamber music for all combinations, solo concerti, choral works and operas.
Ernie Althoff is an Australian musician, composer, instrument builder, and visual artist. He was born in Mildura, Victoria in 1950.
Jonathan Anthony Rose is an Australian violinist, cellist, composer, and multimedia artist. Rose's work is centered in the experimental music known as free improvisation, where he has created large environmental multimedia works, built experimental musical instruments, and improvised violin concertos with accompanying orchestra. He has been described by Tony Mitchell as "undoubtedly the most exploratory, imaginative and iconoclastic violin player who has lived in Australia".
Damien Ricketson is an Australian composer of contemporary classical music. He is best known for his innovative compositional practice and in his capacity as the co-founder and co-artistic director of Ensemble Offspring. He is currently an academic at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney of which he is also an alumnus.
Andrew John Preston "Andi" Spicer was an English electroacoustic classical music composer who used electronics in his compositions.
Gary Lee Nelson is a composer and media artist who taught at Oberlin College in the TIMARA department. He specializes in algorithmic composition, real-time interactive sound and video along with digital film making.
Dr Thomas Fitzgerald is an Australian composer, musical director, conductor and musician.
Experimental music is a general label for any music or music genre that pushes existing boundaries and genre definitions. Experimental compositional practice is defined broadly by exploratory sensibilities radically opposed to, and questioning of, institutionalized compositional, performing, and aesthetic conventions in music. Elements of experimental music include indeterminacy, in which the composer introduces the elements of chance or unpredictability with regard to either the composition or its performance. Artists may approach a hybrid of disparate styles or incorporate unorthodox and unique elements.
Live electronic music is a form of music that can include traditional electronic sound-generating devices, modified electric musical instruments, hacked sound generating technologies, and computers. Initially the practice developed in reaction to sound-based composition for fixed media such as musique concrète, electronic music and early computer music. Musical improvisation often plays a large role in the performance of this music. The timbres of various sounds may be transformed extensively using devices such as amplifiers, filters, ring modulators and other forms of circuitry. Real-time generation and manipulation of audio using live coding is now commonplace.
David Worrall is an Australian composer and sound artist working a range of genres, including data sonification, sound sculpture and immersive polymedia as well as traditional instrumental music composition.
Lindsay Vickery is an Australian composer and performer.
Gregory Marcellus Schiemer is an Australian electronic music composer, instrument builder and teacher. His artistic preoccupations include creative engagement with technology, music created for non-expert performance and intercultural-interfaith dialogue.
Jim Denley is one of Australia's foremost improvisers of new music known for his improvisations on wind instruments and electronics. His radio work Collaborations, produced by ABC Radio National radio won the 1989 Prix Italia for radio production. He was a member of the group Machine for Making Sense with Rik Rue, Amanda Stewart, Chris Mann and Stevie Wishart and the medieval music group Sinfonye, led by Stevie Wishart, in which he played frame drums, including the square medieval pandeiro.
Michael Laurence Gordon Barkl is an Australian composer and musicologist.
The Clifton Hill Community Music Centre (CHCMC), also known as the Organ Factory, was an artist-run music and performance art space in Clifton Hill, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Located in a 19th-century factory used to construct the grand organ in the Melbourne Town Hall, it was co-founded in 1976 by composers Warren Burt and Ron Nagorcka, and ran concerts on a near-weekly basis until 1983. It closed the following year.