ArtistInfo

Robert Burns

Dr. Robert Burns began his career as a professional musician in the early 1970s and performed as a touring and recording bass guitarist for major American soul artists such as Sam and Dave, Isaac Hayes, The Stylistics and Edwin Starr. 1979: Invited to perform in the rock opera, Tommy, by its composer, Pete Townsend of The Who. 1980: First-call session bass guitarist recording for Jon Lord and Ian Paice of Deep Purple, Donna Summer, Atomic Rooster, Zoot Money and the Big Roll Band and Vivian Stanshall of The Bonzo Dog Band. He also played on several television and film soundtracks such as Not The Nine O'Clock News, Three Of A Kind, The Lenny Henry Show, Alas Smith and Jones, Red Dwarf, Blackadder, Mr. Bean, A Perfect Spy, 2.4 Children and French and Saunders. 1982-1987: Performed on two world tours as musical director for Eric Burdon of The Animals as well as in the musical, Abbacadabra, working for Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Anderson of Abba and musical composer Sir Tim Rice. 1987: Formed Robert Burns Music composing film and advertising music for MTV, DeBeers Diamonds, The Sunday Times, Coca Cola, McDonalds, IBM, P&O Cruises and British Aerospace. 1990-1996: Performed with Dave Gilmour (Pink Floyd), James Burton (Elvis Presley) and Frank Gambale (Chick Corea) and he recorded for Jerry Donahue (Joan Armatrading, Fairport Convention) on his solo album, Neck Of The Wood. Rob also arranged songs for Chris Martin in his pre-Coldplay era of the mid-1990s. 1992-2000: Programme Leader and Head of Bass Studies at the Guitar Institute, Basstech and Drumtech, the contemporary music departments of the London College of Music and Media at Thames Valley University in London. In 1997, Rob led the validation for the first popular music performance degree. 1992-1998: Principal examiner for grade exams in bass guitar for Rockschool/Trinity College of Music (London). 1999: Thames Valley University validated the one-year foundation programme in popular music, for which Rob led the design team. 2001-????: Lectured in music at the University of Otago specialising in popular music performance, arranging, composition, music industry studies and cultural studies and he has published work in several academic publications. His PhD thesis was on revivalism in English folk-rock music.

ArtistInfo App

Acknowledgements

ArtistInfo for Mac, iPad, and iPhone