Canary Burton


Canary Burton is an American keyboardist, composer and writer. Burton was born in Richmond, California and later lived in El Paso, Texas. She studied music at the University of Idaho at Moscow, Idaho, from 1972–1979, and relocated to Washington D.C. and then to Cape Cod. Burton continued her studies with Kevin Toney in jazz in 1980, with David Sussman in 1988, with John Zielinski in composition from 1990 to 1992, and briefly with Rodney Lister at the New England Conservatory in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1995. She worked as a music teacher from 1996–2000.
Burton founded and played in various rock and jazz ensembles while completing her education and worked at WPFW Pacifica radio in Washington D.C. for three years. After moving to Cape Cod, she established her own contemporary music radio show The Latest Score, on WOMR in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Selected pieces of her work were included in the published collection Music of Living Composers, compiled by the Campbell University piano professor and composer Betty Wishart in 1997. In 2013, Southern River was among the winners of the annual Search for New Music competition of the International Alliance for Women in Music.
Burton's works have been performed internationally. Her music, with information about her work, is archived in the and in Italy in the library of the . She is the recipient of an ASCAP Plus award, which recognizes composers whose works have a unique prestige value. The 2012 article "Canary Burton: Kaleidoscopic Connections," by Elizabeth Raum, is an extensive profile of the artist.
Her married name was Driller, but she abandoned that name in the 1970s. Her full name is Canary Sandra Lee Adele Burton.

Selected works

One-minute pieces
Jazz
Burton's music has been recorded and issued on CD, including: