about the composer

George Burt (b. 1929) was born in San Francisco and raised in Sausalito, California. He studied composition at the University of California at Berkeley, Mills College in Oakland, California, and Princeton University in New Jersey. His teachers included Milton Babbitt, Andrew Imbrie, Darius Milhaud, and most extensively, Roger Sessions; he also worked with György Ligeti for a year in Vienna. Burt has taught composition at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and Rice University in Houston, Texas. In 1997 Burt moved to Los Angeles to concentrate on composition.

A composer of both concert and film music, Burt has scored seven feature-length films, including two by director Robert Altman: Secret Honor (1984) and Fool for Love (1985). He is also the author of The Art of Film Music (Northeastern University Press, 1994), a subject on which he lectures at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles. Burt's concert works have been performed in both the US and Europe; his most recent piece is a Quartet for two cellos and two contrabasses. He is currently at work on an orchestral piece entitled Symphony: Skagway Piano.