Warren Burt

Hosted in the Listening Room of the Reverb exhibition, these after-hours sessions will feature a different artist each session. Curated by Yasmine Sharaf from RISING and Robin Fox from MESS.

Warren Burt is a composer, performer, writer, video artist, instrument builder, and educator. Born in the USA, he lived in northern New York State and California before moving to Melbourne in 1975. He studied at the State University of New York at Albany (BA, 1967-71) and the University of California, San Diego (MA, 1971-75), and completed a PhD at the University of Wollongong in 2007. In Melbourne, he helped found the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre in 1976, worked in radio at 3CR (1977-80) and the ABC (1979-), and was involved in setting up the Music Department at La Trobe University from 1971-81.

During the 80s and 90s, Warren worked as a freelance artist while holding various academic posts and residencies. These included an Artist and New Technologies Grant from the CSIRO (1984–85), the SENSUS installation at Expo ’88 in Brisbane, and a composer-in-residence position with the American Composers Forum in Minnesota (1994–95). Notable commissions from this period include Voices, Tuning Forks and Accordion for the Astra Choir in 1986 at the Dome Room of the State Library of Victoria, and Darshan with a Pelican, a 40 channel spatial music work commissioned by GRM Paris for their 2021 Acousmonium Concert Series.

Warren helped organise the Linden New Musicales at the Linden Gallery in St Kilda from 1988–94 and was active in Melbourne’s musical and theatrical improvisation scenes from about 1986–2018, particularly at the Theatre of the Ordinary from about 1992–2018. He was also involved with Algorithmic Arts (Fort Worth, Texas), developing algorithmic music software including Music Box, SoftStep, and ArtWonk (1995–2016). His teaching posts include the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign (2001–02), the University of Wollongong and Wollongong TAFE (2004–10), and Box Hill Institute in Melbourne (2011–22), where he headed the Master of Music Program. He currently lives in Ararat, Victoria, composing, rebuilding his website (www.warrenburt.com), assisting Marcus Hobbs in developing the microtonal composition program Wilsonic based on the theories of Ervin M Wilson, and releasing his music on his Scarlet Aardvark Records label, with about 110 titles available at mrwarrenburt.bandcamp.com.