RobertBurger
Composer, Arranger, & Multi-instrumentalist

Robert Burger plays...
piano, accordion, organ, pump organ, vibes, marimba, celeste,
toy piano, glockenspiel, melodica, claviola, harmonica, bass
harmonica, solovox, chamberlin, orchestron, marxophone,
lapsteel, string and horn arrangements.

“Rob Burger's playing is built around resilient and evocative melodies, making any of the subtly experimental arrangement approaches seem as natural as toast in the morning.” --- Signal to Noise

A Brief Biography

Born in New York, Rob Burger returned to the east coast (Brooklyn) in 2001, after building his musical reputation in the Bay Area in the 1990s. Having received his formal education at the University of Massachusetts studying improvisation and classical piano, Rob picked up an accordion as a natural extension of his piano studies. After landing in the Bay Area, Rob kicked off his professional career with an invitation to tour North America and Europe with the Bill Frisell Band. He was a founding member of the performing chamber group Tin Hat Trio, and has utilized his multi-instrumental capabilities playing and recording with Peruvian singer Susana Baca, Rufus Wainwright, Beth Orton, Calexico, Iron & Wine, Laurie Anderson, Antony & The Johnsons, and John Zorn. Since returning to New York, Rob has been honing his arranging skills and, as a result, has been solicited by music producer Hal Willner (Saturday Night Live) to flesh out a handful of concerts that interpret some of music’s most influential composers.

At the end of 2002, Rob released a record of his own compositions entitled Lost Photograph for the Radical Jewish Culture series on the Tzadik label. Remarkably versatile, Rob is as comfortable writing simple 2-minute piano suites for children in tuxedos (NEA commission for New York’s Kaufman Center) as he is layering the sounds of typewriters and other household knick-knacks for fully-arranged film scores (Timescapes, A Multimedia Portrait of New York, Museum of the City of New York, 2005). Other film projects include the documentary, Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man (2006) Everything Is Illuminated (2005), The Good Girl (2002), and

As a collector, Rob continues to indulge his interests and musical vocabulary with an ever-growing arsenal of antique and rare reed organs, Hawaiian guitars and zithers, orchestral harmonicas, mallet percussion, and toy pianos.

A Very Selected Discography:

Rob Burger:	Lost Photograph
Tin Hat Trio:	Memory is an Elephant, Helium, The Rodeo Eroded, Book of Silk
Rufus Wainwright:	Want Two
Susana Baca:	Echo of Shadows
Norah Jones:	Come Away with Me, Feels Like Home
Calexico:	Garden Ruin
John Zorn:	Great Jewish Music: Jacob do Bandolim, Filmworks X111, Filmworks XV111
Laura Cantrell:	Humming by the Flowered Vine
Iron & Wine:	TBA
Richard Buckner:	TBA
Lucinda Williams:	TBA

Robert Burger website: www.myspace.com/robburgermusic