Alto saxophone Dr Fiona Burnett PhD (Melb), musician/composer/ensemble leader/educator, is internationally recognised as a specialist on the soprano saxophone. Fiona has led ensembles since the early 1990s performing at major arts and music festivals in Australia and Asia, Europe and Canada. She is an advocate for women in improvised music, founding the all-female jazz Quintet Morgana in 1992 and developing workshops for young women for the Melbourne Women’s Jazz Festival 2001-2004. Fiona has studied in the US with saxophonists David Liebman and George Coleman, both alumni of Miles Davis’ groups. With a diverse range of musical interest Fiona has also studied contemporary classical composition with Professor Mary Finsterer and classical saxophone with Graeme Shilton. She has been a member of the Music Board of the Australian Council 2003-2006 and has released nine CDs as a leader, four on the ABC label. Fiona has received nominations for APRA and Australian Music Awards was a finalist in the Freedman Fellowship and has received numerous competitive arts funding grants from the Australia Council, Arts Victoria and Playing Australia. She was the Program Chair for the 2017 and 2018 AJIRN Conferences at Monash University and has throughout her career led an eclectic range of projects, composing and performing works for strings, jazz trio, quartet, and quintet. Fiona has an interest in Baroque woodwind techniques adapting and recording the work BWV 1008 by JS Bach on the soprano saxophone informing her PhD research titled “Identifying and Developing the Personal Voice in Improvised Music.”, an investigation into the artistic processes of developing individual syntax in improvisation completed in 2020 at The University of Melbourne.
Fiona Burnett
