Burton Greene Bio

Burton Greene

Pianist/composer Narada Burton Greene was born in Chicago on June 14, 1937 and has appeared on over 40 recordings in jazz, electronic, and folk music. As an eclectic composer and performer, his works are involved with jazz, contemporary classics, electronics, and a great variety of folklore musics.

Greene studied classical music with the Fine Arts Building's Isadore Buchalter and jazz theory and harmony with Dick Marx, and continued learning in the "School of the Streets" from local luminaries like Billy Green and Ira Sullivan. He moved to New York in 1962, and the next year formed arguably the first spontaneous composition group -- The Free Form Improvisation Ensemble -- with bassist Alan Silva.

He joined Bill Dixon and Cecil Taylor's Jazz composers Guild in 1964, and also played with a number of other artists, including Rashied Ali, Albert Ayler, Gato Barbieri, Byard Lancaster, Sam Rivers, Patty Waters, and others before moving to Europe in 1969, to Paris and later to Amsterdam.

During the 1980s, he started working with Eastern music. His most recent project here has been with Perry Robinson in the klezmer-jazz group Klezmokum, which delves into Greene's eastern European Jewish roots, blending Jewish/Semitic music with improvised music and jazz. Burton is currently teaching Jewish and Balkan Jazz at Amsterdam’s Muziekschool.

He has collaborated with a host of other musicians, including Albert Ayler, Clarence Becton, Han Bennink, Sean Bergin, Anthony Braxton, Willem Breuker, Roy Campbell, Tobias Delius, Martin van Duynhoven, Lou Grassi, Akki Hak, Tom Jones, Theo Loevendie, Keshavan Maslak, Michael Moore, Wilber Morris, Sunny Murray, Perry Robinson, Roswell Rudd, Paul Stocker, Tjitze Vogel, Raoul van der Weide and Frank Wright.

Burton Greene's Interview with Dan Warburton

Burton Greene Retrospective in Signal to Noise (Spring 2004)

Burton Green's Website