artist-musician, russian studies
william (andrew) burnson
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Andrew at the Bolshoi Zal in St. Petersburg
Brief Biography
I was born in Tucson, Arizona. I began piano lessons when I was four and often improvised compositions. In 2000 I joined the Young Composers Project as a freshman and high school and wrote a symphonic composition, Coming of Age, which was read by the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. In my junior of high school, 2001-2002, I began formal composition and theory lessons independently under James Wiznerowicz at the University of Arizona.

After high school I went to Bucknell University and studied chamber writing. My junior year, I went abroad to Russia for four months to study Russian and research my upcoming thesis on Shostakovich. During my senior year, I wrote incidental music in the fall for the German play Spring Awakening scored for live string quartet. In the spring I performed a memorized concert of George Crumb's Makrokosmos: Volume I in a solo lecture-recital using special lighting effects. In May 2007 I finished a thesis on Shostakovich's 1-5-6-5 motive. I graduated with a Bachelor of Music in Music Composition and fulfilled the requirements for a Bachelor of Arts in Russian.

I now study composition at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign School of Music, working on a Masters of Music in Music Composition. I recently produced an experimental graphic work Bike Ride, the score of which has been digitally typeset in the shape of a bicycle.

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