Timothy Burris

Timothy Burris has performed throughout Europe and the US, both as a soloist and an accompanist. He has appeared in concert with such esteemed artists as the mezzo Jennifer Lane and the keyboardist Robert Hill, as well as under the baton of Peter Schreier and René Clemencic, among others. In a CD review, Lute News (published by the London-based Lute Society) said of his skills: “Burris … plays with beautiful tone and is an absolutely first-class accompanist.” Early Music America Magazine (now titled EMag) described his playing on the CD Ciaccona: “Burris, a well-seasoned performer, presents these works with a clean and clear technique that allows compositional brilliance to stand in the forefront.”

As is the case with many lutenists, Mr Burris began by playing classical guitar. He studied privately with Chris Kachian, now the head of the St Thomas University Guitar Department, in St Paul. He also performed in guitar master classes led by Jeffrey Van, as well as with Michael Lorimer (at the University of California, Davis) and John Holmquist (at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, Milwaukee). Before moving to the Netherlands, Mr Burris also performed in lute master classes with both Paul O’Dette and Lyle Nordstrom (then of the Musicians of Swanne Alley) and Toyohiko Satoh (at the College of St Scholastica, Duluth).

At The Hague’s Royal Conservatory, he studied lute under Toyohiko Satoh, and graduated with a soloist diploma in lute performance. He also studied guitar with the head of the conservatory’s guitar department, the Uruguayan Antonio Pereira Arias. (Also an accomplished double bass player, Pereira Arias studied guitar with Atilio Rapat and Andres Segovia, as well as Musicology under Emilio Pujol).

From 1990-96 he was lute instructor at the Royal Flemish Conservatory in Antwerp (now called the Royal Academy of Fine Arts). Since 2000, he has been on the faculty of the Portland Conservatory of Music. He has been a member of the applied music faculty at Colby College for over ten years. He conducted the Collegium during the 2015-16 academic year. He also maintains a private studio.

Mr Burris was the founder and artistic director of Portland, Maine’s Early Music Festival, which was sponsored by the Portland Conservatory of Music from 2011 through 2019.

In addition to solo recordings, he has done CD projects with Jennifer Lane and Tamara Matthews with New York Baroque; Willeke te Brummelstroete with Koorprojekt Rotterdam; Timothy Neill Johnson; and Ensemble Pentacost, among others. He can be heard playing Bach’s c minor Prelude in Shock Act, the prize-winning short-film DVD by Seth Grossman.

His foreign-language talents include fluency in German, French, and Dutch, and excellent facility in Spanish and Italian. His linguistic skills enhance his abilities as an accompanist, as well as adding to his effectiveness in coaching singers and instrumentalists in educational events such as master classes. He has an especial interest in French poetry, something he nurtured during more than two years of private study with French professors at the universities of Amsterdam and Leiden. His dissertation research was done primarily at Dresden’s Sächsische Landesbibliothek, in the final stages with the generous support of a Fulbright fellowship (to the Technical University of Dresden).

Instruments:

Mr Burris performs and teaches on lute,  theorbo, classical guitar, ukulele, and mandolin.

EDUCATION:

Soloist’s diploma, Royal Conservatory, The Hague

Ph.D., Duke University