Artist: Gary Burton

Gary Burton is an American jazz vibraphonist, composer, and educator. Burton developed a pianistic four-mallet technique as an alternative to the prevailing two-mallet technique. That approach caused him to be heralded as an innovator, and his sound and technique are widely imitated. 

He is also known for pioneering fusion jazz and popularizing the duet format in jazz, as well as being a major figure in music education, from his 30 years at the Berklee College of Music. 

Burton attended Berklee College of Music, from 1960–61, and the Stan Kenton Clinic at Indiana University in 1960. He studied with Herb Pomeroy, and soon befriended composer and arranger Michael Gibbs. 

After establishing his career during the 1960s, he returned to join the staff of Berklee from 1971–2004, serving first as professor, then dean, and finally executive vice president, during his last decade at the college. In 1989, Burton received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee. 

Early in his career, at the behest of Nashville saxophonist Boots Randolph, Burton moved to Nashville, Tennessee and recorded with several musicians from the area, including guitarist Hank Garland, pianist Floyd Cramer and guitarist Chet Atkins. 

Burton toured the U.S. and Japan with pianist George Shearing. Shearing asked Burton to write an entire album of compositions for him, which were released as Out of the Woods in 1965. Burton described the album in his autobiography, Learning to Listen, as his "most ambitious effort at composing and arranging". 

Burton played with saxophonist Stan Getz from 1964 to 1966.

In 1967, he formed the Gary Burton Quartet with guitarist Larry Coryell, drummer Roy Haynes, and bassist Steve Swallow. Predating the jazz-rock fusion craze of the 1970s, the group's first album, Duster, combined jazz, country, and rock.

After Coryell left the quartet in the late 1960s, Burton worked with guitarists Jerry Hahn, David Pritchard, Mick Goodrick, Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Kurt Rosenwinkel, and Julian Lage.