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Robert ( Rob ) Burke

Australian Sax player -Improviser, composer, teacher, academic

About Me

Robert Burke is currently the co-ordinator of Jazz and Popular Studies at Monash University – Melbourne Australia. An improvising musician, Rob has performed and composed on over 300 CDs and has toured extensively throughout Australia, Asia, Europe, and USA over the last 30 years. He has also released 12 CDs under his own name and has focused on creating research, educational and artistic ties with institutions, researchers and musicians in Italy, USA (New York), Japan and Brazil. Rob has recorded with international leaders in jazz and experimental music. George Lewis (Columbia University - NYC), Dave Douglas (USA), Enrico Rava (ITL), Hermeto Pascoal (Brazil), Kenny Werner (USA), Mark Helias(USA), Ben Monder (USA), Tom Rainey (USA), Tony Malaby (USA), Nasheet Waites (USA), George Garzone (USA), Paul Grabowsky, Tony Gould, Debasis Chackroborty (India) and Paulo Angeli (Italy). Rob’s research is mainly focussed on practice-based artistic research, (jazz, improvisation and jazz pedagogy). Publications include co-edited book, Perspectives on Artistic Research in Music (Lexington) co-written Experimentation in improvised Jazz: Chasing Ideas. (2018 Routledge) Webpage: www.robburke.com.au Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rob.burke.355

New Book out 2018 Experimentation in Improvised Jazz: Chasing Ideas https://www.routledge.com/Experimentation-in-Improvised-Jazz-Chasing-Ideas/Onsman-Burke/p/book/9781138316676 Experimentation in Improvised Jazz: Chasing Ideas challenges the notion that in the twenty-first century, jazz can be restrained by a singular, static definition. The worldwide trend for jazz to be marginalized by the mainstream music industry, as well as conservatoriums and schools of music, runs the risk of stifling the innovative and challenging aspects of its creativity. The authors argue that to remain relevant, jazz needs to be dynamic, proactively experimental, and consciously facilitate new ideas to be made accessible to an audience broader than the innovators themselves.　Experimentation in Improvised Jazz explores key elements of experimental jazz music in order to discern ways in which the genre is developing.　

The book begins with an overview of where, when and how new ideas in free and improvised jazz have been created and added to the canon, developing the genre beyond its initial roots. It moves on to consider how and why musicians create free and improvised jazz; the decisions they make while playing. What are they responding to? What are they depending on? What are they thinking? The authors analyse and synthesise the creation of free jazz by correlating the latest research to the reflections provided by some of the world’s greatest jazz innovators for this project. Finally, the book examines how we respond to free and improvised jazz: artistically, critically and personally. Free jazz is, the book argues, an environment that develops through experimentation with new ideas.