Brian Burtt - Profile

(Dispensing with the trope of writing in the third person…) I am originally from Saginaw, Michigan, a decaying auto factory town. After seven years earning two degrees at Michigan State University, another seven doing various things in Pittsburgh, I find myself in Syracuse, New York, pursuing a doctoral degree in "cultural foundations of education," where I work on combining questions of political philosophy and educational policy. Besides being thoroughly immersed in contemporary liberal thought, I am being gradually beckoned in the direction of the ancient Greeks.

I didn’t discover classical music until my college years. Perhaps my previous time listening to hard rock and heavy metal (OK, the dirty secret is that I still listen to these things) explains my attraction to composers such as Mahler, Bruckner, Shostakovich, and Prokofiev. Reviewing for MusicWeb provides an opportunity - hopefully with benefits that redound to the reader - to explore the music that strikes my fancy at the moment. My interests and reviews have, however, been predominantly clustered in three areas: 1) symphonic music since 1800, with an emphasis on the 20^th century, 2) contemporary chamber music, 3) classical guitar, an instrument in which I have been taking lessons for a couple of years and whose recorded history I have been familiarizing myself with.

As I’m sure is the case for many writers and readers of MusicWeb, music figures in my life somewhere between hobby and pathological obsession.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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