Trevor Burt
Mississauga, Ontario, Canada | INDIE | AFM
Music
Press
by Danny Gaisin
In Toronto, there are a number of venues that offer opportunities for up-and-coming artists and composers to publicize their new works. Even some of the T.O. bistros like BRASS TAPS at College & Dovercourt; and BRASS TAPS II located on Carlton St. just west of Parliament cater to new artists and groups. Here in Oakville, two relatively new sites are doing the same. C J’s CAFE on Lakeshore Rd. in Bronte; & the MOONSHINE, which is on the East side of Kerr St. just south of Rebecca are supporting the same clientele. In addition, both also cater to- & display, works by visual artists.
A CD Launch is an opportunity to hear an extended live concert by the artist; meet him or her; and purchase the disk tax-free. Additionally, one learns the rationale and background that went into creating; selecting; and recording of the collection. This past Sunday, we attended such an event.
Trevor Burt is a classical guitar musician and teacher. He’s also one hell of a poet and it is his lyrics that first caught my interest. There are some famous recording stars that accompany themselves by banging out chords; others like Emmett and Burt are talented & accomplished musicians whose playing can execute theme and melody without vocalization. They play their instruments without resorting to electronic enhancement of decibel level.
The great Randy Bachman made a cross-country tour a few years back in which he emphasized lyrics. The trip was titled ‘Every Song Tells a story’…it was a wonderful concept. At Burt’s event, we were made privy to his life. In one song; - ‘Loneliness’ he sings about faith; family; his wife; and love as a cure-all for the social change brought on by emigration to a new shore. Another cut ‘Sounds of The Ocean’ iterates life and his own character. Then segue into history with a tale about J.S. Bach and his surreptitious peeks at his older brother’s music collection. His Henry Tudor’s Ragtime Blues speaks of the king; Anne, Cromwell; Culpepper & Cranmer – the witness against Boleyn…true folk format. Contemporarily, he’s written about a woman whose love has died soldiering overseas. That plus his paean to 9/11 is touching and sensitive.
To polish his presentation, he invited the young operatic soprano Anna Bateman to share his stage. Her ‘Bach Ave Maria’ was enthralling.
Next time you read or hear of a launch…consider attending. Chances are you’ll enjoy yourself. - Halton Art's Review
by Chris Clay
You can't say Streetsville Musician Trevor Burt doesn't have a sense of humour. Take, for example. the he gave to a concert slated for Saturday, Oct. 4 in Guelph. He could have played it straight but instead went for the big laughs when he named it A Tribute to Old, Dead, White Guys. The concert which takes place in Cooperaters Hall of the River Run Centre, will feature the guitarist performing selections from artist various as J.S. Bach, Mauro Giuliani, Hector Villa-Lobos and John Dowland. The event is billed as a series of solo guitar selections from the courts of old Europe to the cafes of modern Brazil.
Burt has released a pair of albums throughout his career. His second album, the 11-track Short Stories, release last year, was recorded at Burt's home studio. It was produced by Mississauga's Charles Cozens, a Juno Award-nominate artist who also played on the release. The album was a follow-up to 1999's Convergence.
However, Short Stories distances itself from the previous recordings with a greater emphasis on folk
music, although the occassional classical sound sneaks into a few of the songs here and there.
As a young man, Burt was enamoured with the folk style and performed it regularly. Over the years, he gradually moved over to classical before returning to his roots with the latest album.
Burt won the Mississauga Musician of the Year award in 1990. - Mississauga News
The Lake City concert series presents the second concert of the 2006-2007 season Thursday Nov.9 at 8pm in the Lake City Presbyterian Church, 301 E. Main Street, Lake City
Trevor Burt is a classical guitarist from Mississauga, Ontariom Canada. He has preformed his own compositions and masterworks from the guitar repetoire to capacity crowds and rave reviews since 1989. He has preformed previously at the Lake Cuty Concert Series, and presented a program for a meeting of the Lake City Junior Sorosis Club this past year.
His music is frequently broadcast in Canada by the CBC, and he has been heard internationally as far away as Tokyo. Burt's debut album "Convergence" was released in 1999. He is the author of Guitar Bands, a classroom ensemble guitar method used as the basis for guitar programs in schools across North America.
He will be performing with reknowned coloratura soprano soloist Anna Bateman, of Victoria, British Columbia.
After High School Bateman moved to Toronto to study voice. Shortly thereafter, she enrolled in the Royal Conservatory of Music Performer's Associateship Program, of which she is now in the final stage. Bateman's recent performances include operatic roles; she is also in demand as a recitalist.
She has recently performed in France, and has a recital in Toronto with Burt in Toronto just before their Lake City appearance. - Lake City ,South Carolina News & Post
Discography
LPs-Convergence-Rapport Music 98 001
Short Stories-Rapport Music 06 002
Samples and /or downloads at: www.trevorburt.ca,
radio3.cbc.ca/bands/Trevor-Burt, http://cdbaby.com/cd/trevorburt
Photos
Bio
Are you old enough to remember Roy Rogers and Gene Autry? Did you ever sing along to "Happy Trails" and "Back in the Saddle Again"? I am and I did. When I was five years old I wanted to grow up and be just like them-a singing cowboy. Then came piano lessons, guitar lessons, elementary school, high school, the Beach Boys, the Beatles, a Union Jack free Canadian flag, Vietnam and the counter-culture. Singing cowboys became very uncool. Despite the fact that a part of me still yearned to be a singing cowboy, I suppressed the urge and did what every other North American teenage boy with an electric guitar did. I joined a rock'n'roll band!
You know the old saying about square pegs and round holes? That about sums up me and the rock'n'roll idiom. There was too much noise, too much debt, and there were too many colliding egos. Add into the mix a slew of management wrangles, record label disputes and that ever essential cliche, substance abuse, and, well ....you get the picture. After hundreds of ear ringing, bone rattling gigs and seven years of unrelenting frustration I moved on.
Ironically, disillusionment with the rock'n'roll business set the stage (pardon the pun) for an exciting new direction. I bought an acoustic guitar, a small PA, a used VW station-wagon and, "Voila" I was a folksinger.
By now we're talking about the early to mid-seventies. While Watergate and the first oil crisis dominated the headlines I was happily tripping along from town to town, gig to gig. My set lists included songs like "Please Come to Boston" by Dave Loggins and Bruce Cockburn favorites like "Blues Got the World" and "Foxglove". Fortunately there was a greater tolerance in the folk world for original material so I got to play some of my own tunes such as, "Old, Lonely, Pine" and "White House Rag". I worked clubs like Egertons in Toronto and The Nozzle in Ottawa, University coffee-houses and more bars than I can remember. Two agents were keeping me gigging steadily and- here's the amazing thing-I was earning a living. So why did I stop?
An album entitled, "Julian Bream Plays Baroque Guitar" captured my soul and changed the course of my life. I immediately enrolled at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto and embarked on a regimen of practicing and studying that carried me through the rest of my twenties and into my thirties. By the mid-eighties I had an RCM diploma in hand, a successful guitar teaching studio on the go and an instruction method for classroom guitar called "Guitar Bands"published by Gordon V. Thomson. Alas, I was hungry for more knowledge. That hunger led me to the University of Toronto and ultimately to a Bachelor of Music in Performance Degree.
My new credentials helped launch tours stateside and inclusion on the South Carolina Arts Commission's Artist Roster. I was invited to perform classical recitals in a variety of venues from the AGO in Toronto to Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina. During this period I was given several opportunities to work with stellar musicians, among them American soprano Laura Sutton Floyd and Chamber Music Hilton Head. my career was clearly expanding so why did I have a growing sense of discontent by the the late nineteen-nineties.
Was it the old singing cowboy who had returned to haunt me or the specter of my folkie past? I suspect it was both. In any event, the seeds of combining folk and classical together had been sown. The result was a solo classical guitar recording based on folk songs dating from the Renaissance to the present. In acknowledgment of this fusion of styles I named my debut CD, "Convergence" and released it to critical acclaim
in 1999. All was well until....
9/11 happened. Although the impact on me pales in comparison to those directly affected, it was a game changer. One consequence was that the I.N.S. (U.S. Immigration Service) immediately brushed aside all “non-essential” visa applications. That cost me an entire tour scheduled for the fall of 2001. I was able to make it up one year later. However; the new reality made me think long and hard about what really matters. So in 2005 I wrote and recorded “Short Stories”, an album of songs about…well…life and death. Since the release of “Short Stories” I’ve been playing more folk gigs than classical recitals. Fortunately for me clubs like the Moonshine Café in Oakville and small halls like Perth Studio Theatre in (where else?) Perth, attract audiences that appreciate both styles. That is the ideal situation for me.
There’s no point belaboring any more of the ups and downs I’ve experienced as a performer and guitar teacher. The bottom line is this. I’ve met a lot of people, more good than bad, and some of them have even said nice things about my music. Shelagh Rogers of the old Take Five CBC Radio show called “Convergence”, “a rare gem in the Canadian music scene.”, and David Bradstreet praised “Short Stories” as an example of “Great vocals, great guitar playing and great songwriting.” I’ve
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