Jonathan Chong The pianist Chick Corea, left, and Gary Burton, who have won six Grammy Awards together.If you’re only a casual listener to jazz, and not a vibraphonist, Gary Burton may not be a big name to you. But he’s probably had more to do with the development of jazz over the last 50 years than you think as a player (he developed the widely used four-mallet Burton Grip for the vibraphone); a mentor (to Pat Metheny, for starters); a conceptual inspiration (to Bill Frisell, among others, through the way he incorporated country and rock into his music during the late ’60s); and a long-time teacher and administrator at Berklee College of Music.
Mr. Burton, now 70, recently released “Guided Tour,†one of his best records in years, with the New Gary Burton Quartet. He’s also just published a candid autobiography, “Learning to Listen.†As Nate Chinen, a jazz critic for The Times, tells host Ben Ratliff, the book explains much about coming to jazz as an outsider several times over â€" a white Midwestern vibraphonist, but also as a gay man who didn’t come out publicly until the mid-’90s.
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Tracks by artists discussed this week. (Spotify users can also find it here.)
