Alison Burns - Profile
songwriter . singing workshop facilitator . community choir director
Alison Burns is a songwriter, music facilitator, educator and community choir director. She writes songs for community and folk choirs as well as for schools - pre-school, primary and special needs. Her music has been heard throughout the UK: in theatre and in public art installations and in the repertoire of many community choirs. Inspiring audiences, workshop participants and critics alike, Alison’s music “shivers and crackles with delicious harmonies”. The List
Alison is a well-respected community musician with an outstanding record of workshop tutoring. She has worked with choirs and singing groups, within the arts and culture sector and in mainstream and special needs education. Her innovative instruments and creative music activities offer a powerful way for children to engage with voice and music.
In her public workshops Ali teaches either her own compositions or songs from various traditional song archives around Britian that she has researched and 'reconditioned' (finding or writing appropriate tunes, sometimes amalgamating versions to create one song or recreating incomplete songs by studying different versions or similar songs). She has published four collections of new songs and arrangements including a book of children's songs.
“I want to recreate the richness of harmony that makes songs of oral traditions from around the world so satisfying and joyful to sing, but with words that root the work firmly back in my own culture.”
Since 2000, Ali has been researching British folk carols from oral traditions. From this research, she created The Forgotten Carols: workshops and performances celebrating midwinter and Christmas.