Richard James Burgess

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Richard James Burgess has been successful as a studio drummer, music-computer programmer, major-label artist, record producer, composer, published author, manager, marketer and inventor.

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[edit] Artist/Musician

Burgess co-produced, co-wrote, programmed, sang and played drums for the European audio-visual, electronica group Landscape, whose album From The Tearooms Of Mars To The Hellholes Of Uranus yielded the international hits, Einstein A Go Go and Norman Bates. His studio-drumming career includes albums such as Adam Ant’s Strip and The Buggles’ The Age of Plastic. As a Capitol Records solo artist he charted singles on the Billboard dance charts hitting the #1 slot on the hip New York Dance Music Report charts. He also recorded with the British National Youth Jazz Orchestra and jazz musicians Neil Ardley, Ian Carr and Nucleus and played with Graham Collier OBE.

[edit] Innovations

He defined the computer programmers’ and samplers’ role in modern music via his work in the seventies with the MC8 Microcomposer and with Fairlight CMI firsts such as Kate Bush’s Never Forever album and Visage’s Fade To Grey. He conceptualized and co-designed the first standalone electronic drum-set, the ground-breaking hexagonal shaped SDS5. He appeared three times on the BBC TV program Tomorrow's World demonstrating his prototype electronic drum invention which became the SDS5; the use of the Roland MC-8 Microcomposer computer in pop music; and the world's first digital sampling machine the Fairlight CMI. He coined the name for the New Romantic movement of the early nineteen-eighties.[citation needed] His NYC production of Colonel Abrams' which yielded the gold singles "Trapped" and "I'm Not Gonna Let" are widely considered to have been the precursor to the House Music phenomenon.

[edit] Education

His education includes music studies at Boston’s Berklee College of Music and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, private lessons with Alan Dawson, Peter Ind, Tony Oxley, James Blades, (London Symphony Orchestra), David Arnold (conductor) (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra), Kurt Hans Goedicke (London Symphony Orchestra), movement with Bruno Tonioli and drama with Uta Hagen.

[edit] Awards and Achievements

With the avant-garde electronic group Accord he was featured on BBC Radio 3 programs Music In Our Time and Improvisation Workshop. He played in the British National Youth Jazz Orchestra, won the Greater London Arts Association’s Young Jazz Musicians award, the Vitavox Live Sound award and was chosen for the British Arts Council’s prestigious Park Lane Group Purcell Room concert series. He is featured in The A to Z of Rock Drummers.

[edit] Educator

His book The Art of Music Production (ISBN 1844494314), (originally titled: The Art of Record Production, ISBN 37398832) published by Music Sales [1] (Omnibus Press [2]) is in its third edition and he has written many articles for technical and music magazines. He has lectured on the subject of record production and the music business at such colleges as UCLA, NYU, MTSU, Sheffield Institute for the Recording Arts (Baltimore) and LIPA (Liverpool, England).He wrote and presented the BBC World Service radio series Let There Be Drums. He currently teaches drums at the Annapolis Music School [3] in Maryland, USA.

[edit] Productions

In the early eighties he emerged as a pre-eminent producer of the New Romantic movement, producing Spandau Ballet’s first two gold albums and first six hit singles - a compilation of which is double platinum. He won a Music Week sales award as a production and has created 24 charted singles and 14 hit albums

Subsequent productions include: Adam Ant, King (band), New Edition, Melba Moore, Colonel Abrams', America, Kim Wilde, Five Star, Tony Banks (of Genesis), and Fish (Of Marillion), Living in a Box, Princess, Virginia Astley, Errol Brown (Of Hot Chocolate Fame), When In Rome, Shriekback, Shock, Barbie Wilde and a pioneering ambient album by the award-winning British group Praise. He also produced, engineered and mixed albums by Rubicon and X-CNN under the pseudonym Caleb Kadesh and did several mixes using the pseudonym Cadillac Jack.

[edit] Mixes and compositions

Burgess’s mixes and remixes include tracks for the movies 9½ Weeks, About Last Night and artists Thomas Dolby, Lou Reed, Youssou N'Dour, Luba and many others. His compositions and productions have appeared in many TV shows and movies. Major-label artists have recorded his songs.

[edit] Current activities

He is currently Director of Marketing and Sales for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings [4] and Smithsonian Global Sound [5], runs his own artist management company, Burgess Worldco [6] in the Washington DC area representing Jimmie's Chicken Shack [7], Jarflys [8]and DZK[9]. He is on the Board of Governors for the Washington DC Chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (co-chairing the Producer and Engineer Wing committee for the chapter) and is on the Board of The Music Managers Forum US [10]. He also produces and plays drums for the blues band Electrofied [11].

[edit] References

[edit] External links