Mark Burton

Fiddler • improviser • teacher • lifelong musical explorer

I am a fiddler and multi-instrumentalist. I busk, teach, host and join jams, perform with groups, and follow music wherever it leads. I make music to connect, explore, listen, and discover what can happen when people create together.

My Musical Life

Busking Is Only One Part of It

Busking and public playing • Community jams • Group performances • Wintergrass youth education • Fiddle study, improvisation, and musical experiments

Fiddle is my main musical voice, but it is not my only one. I also play guitar, piano, bass, and drums, and I sing. My musical life wanders through old-time, Irish and contra-dance music, ragtime, jazz and swing, blues, klezmer, and whatever else catches my ear.

Most of all, I love music as something people make together. I host a weekly old-time jam, join other tune and song jams, play with groups and for dances, busk, and teach in Wintergrass’s youth education program each year. I love the way an old-time tune can welcome players with different levels of experience, and the way jazz invites listening, risk, theory, and improvisation.

I am always studying and experimenting: learning tunes by ear, exploring harmony and movable-DO solfège, playing with grooves, and discovering new paths through familiar music. For me, music is less a finished product than an ongoing conversation.

When you find me playing in public, you are encountering one part of my musical life. I am an improviser, in music and in life. I am a “yes, and” kind of person. To me, improvisation means listening closely and responding to what is already happening. It flourishes within a shared frame: a groove, a tonal center, a form, and people who make room for one another.

If I am wearing earbuds, I may be listening to a backing track or protecting my concentration from the surrounding noise. It does not mean I do not want to meet you. You are welcome to talk to me.

And if you sing or play an instrument, you do not even have to begin with conversation. Listen for a moment, find your place in the music, and play. I hope you will try to make music with me. The most beautiful musical encounters do not take over someone else’s sonic space. They enter it, respond to it, and help create something neither person would have made alone.

Listen. Find the Groove. Add Your Sound.