Matthew Burtner’s music and sound art has been described by The Wire as “some of the most eerily effective electroacoustic music I’ve heard,” and 21st Century Music writes "There is a horror and beauty in this music that is most impressive." First prize winner of the Musica Nova International Electroacoustic Music Competition he has also received honors and awards from Bourges, Gaudeamus, Darmstadt, Prix d’Ete, Meet the Composer, ASCAP, Luigi Russolo, AMC, and Hultgren Biennial. Commissioners include CrossSound, Quincena Festival (Spain), Musik-I-Nordland (Norway), Phyllis Bryn-Julson, Peabody Trio, SpectriSonori, Augsburg Festival (Germany), Ascolto (Germany), and Ensemble Noise. His work has been recorded for DACO (Germany), The WIRE (U.K.), Centaur (USA), Innova (USA), and Euridice (Norway). Burtner teaches composition and computer music at the University of Virginia where he is Associate Director of the VCCM Computer Music Center. Originally from Alaska, he studied philosophy, composition, saxophone and computer music at St. Johns College, Tulane University, Iannis Xenakis's UPIC-Studios, the Peabody Institute/Johns Hopkins and Stanford University/CCRMA. In 2005 and 2006 he was an Invited Researcher at IRCAM/Centre-George-Pompidou, Paris. He has been composer-in-residence at Musikene (Spain), Banff Centre (Canada), Simon Fraser University (Canada), the IUA/Phonos-Institute (Spain), and the Cite-International-des-Arts (France).
www.burtner.net

Endprint (2004)
pour neuf saxophones ténors

Endprint for nine acoustic tenor saxophones treats the acoustic instrumental body as an electroacoustic sound synthesis system. Each instrument plays complex sonorities such as trills, multiphonics, and overblown sounds. Multiplied across the nine similar instruments, these sounds create dense and evolving textures.  Endprint reveals how an electro-acoustic approach to composition can be applied to purely acoustic instruments.

The ensemble of nine tenor saxophones became something of a signature ensemble of Burtner since his Portals of Distortion was released to critical acclaim in 1999. Mark Alburger in 21st Century Music describes the nine saxophone pieces as “giant blocks of sound that seem impervious to destruction,” and Philip Blackburn of Gramaphone writes "The ringing drones of the sax multiphonics suggest a miasmal world of ice, crags, and Northern Lights.’