Matriarch Of Jazz: Claudia Burson 'embodies what this music is about'

Jim Greeson, a musician himself, may say it best about Claudia Burson.

"She's not the most likely jazz musician you'll ever see. She has almost a librarian sort of look to her, but then she sits down and plays, and everybody goes, 'Hot damn!' A lot of people go hear her play because it's a treat to hear her musically, but I think other people go because it's a delight to see her play. I'm a big fan."

Greeson, in fact, gives the pianist credit for inspiring the KUAF Summer Jazz Concert Series. And now that the summer series is in its 18th year, it seems only appropriate that it open by paying homage to Burson, says Robert Ginsburg, executive director of the Northwest Arkansas Jazz Society.

"It's long overdue, first of all," he says. "Claudia is really considered to be the matriarch of jazz in Northwest Arkansas. She embodies what this music is about."

"I can't even begin to say what she means to the jazz community," agrees Steve Wilkes, who has been playing with Burson for 20 years. "There are people playing all over the country who have been influenced by her.

"She's a kind of a diminutive person walking across the street," he echoes Greeson, "but you put her behind the piano, and she's a freight train. If you can't get on board, just jump out of the way, or you're going to get run over."

That train started to pick up speed when Burson was 8 and heard the sound of a piano through a neighbor's Fayetteville window. She begged her parents for lessons, she recalls, which she took in the basement of Guisinger's Music House on the downtown square.

Roughly four years later, having heard her uncle, Kermit Burson, play jazz guitar, she discovered music that "wasn't written." She didn't know the word "improvisation" at the time, but the concept was enough to hook Burson and reel her in.

""I loved that you could make it up, that you could create," she said in a 2007 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette profile story. "Before that, all I knew was the printed page, the notation. I wanted something more."

As a teenager, Burson set out to raise the money to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston, working in her father's diner, playing piano for the University of Arkansas dance department and joining two rock 'n' roll bands, Changin' Time with David Renner, Linda Legg and Lonnie and Ross Hawkins and Sundance with Dan Kerlin, Steve Davison, Glen Hendrix, Charlie Franklin and David Roitman. But instead of heading north, in 1978, she took off for Houston and ended up staying 20 years.

"I got a call from a friend of mine to go down there and form a blues band, so I just went," she says. "When I got down there, I discovered there was a community of jazz musicians, Houston being as sizable as it is. What a great place to learn to play the blues and play with musicians better than myself!"

Even at age 69, Burson still says "everything is related to music" and "jazz musicians don't retire unless they can't play anymore." She teaches both at the UA and privately and plays with her trio several times a month. As far as the tribute concert, "I don't know what got into them," she says of the Northwest Arkansas Jazz Society. "I'm honored they would want me to do this. But I still think there are musicians out there who are far more capable."

"She inspires people," Ginsburg disagrees. "She gives jazz musicians room to discover and express who they are. "

NAN What's Up on 07/22/2016