Jacques Burtin

Jacques Burtin writes, produces and directs poetic and experimental short films as well as documentaries on contemporary artists. His films What damns me saves me and The Dialogue of Shadows were screened at the Festival de Cannes in 2011 and 2012. The Child of La République was screened at the Bilbao Short Film Festival Zinebi in 2015.

On 12 May 2006 his music is featured among the works of twelve composers from around the world in Sonic Channels, a concert hosted by the New School University and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Since 2006, Jacques Burtin also plays the gravi-kora and composes for this instrument. He gives kora and gravi-kora master classes and works on kora pedadogy.

In 2004, he is invited by the Paul Verlaine University (Metz, France) to participate to the Colloque sur l'Art du Peu (Seminar on the Art of the Few): he gives a solo kora performance based on haikus and writes an essay: La Tentation du peu (The Temptation of the Few).

Between 2002 and 2012, Jacques Burtin gives seminars on Improvisation and Interdisciplinary Creation in the Faculty of Fine Arts School of the University of Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain, in collaboration with Spanish Choreographer Alicia Gómez Linares.

In 1997, Jacques Burtin meets Susan Allen (musician), harpist, professor of harp and improvisation at CalArts (California Institute of the Arts). From their meeting until Susan Allen's passing in 2015, they see each other on a regular basis to improvise, give performances and exchange on musical pedagogy. In 2007, they release the CD Renaissance. After the death of Susan Allen, Jacques Burtin pays tribute to the American harpist by creating a dedicated website with unreleased testimonies, musical creations specially written by composers of all horizons and unpublished videos of their Paris sessions (harp and kora improvisations).

Jacques Burtin (born 10 November 1955) is a French composer, writer, producer and filmmaker.