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Bill Gallery

Gary Burton Generations, from left, features Luques Curtis on bass, James Williams on drums, Burton on vibraphone, Julian Lage on guitar and Vadim Neselovskyi on piano.

Now 66, Burton will perform Friday through Sunday at Manchester Craftsmen's Guild with his Generations band of young musicians. With Burton on the phone from his home in Florida, let's begin at the beginning.

"Usually the question is, 'Why on earth did you start playing the vibraphone?' " he says. "And it was because there was a lady in the neighborhood that played the marimba and the vibraphone and gave lessons. I was 6 years old, and my family wanted all three of us kids to get music lessons of some kind. My older sister was already taking piano."

Burton studied marimba for a year and a half before his family moved from a suburb of Indianapolis 200 miles south to Princeton, at the bottom of the state.

"By the time I was about 8, 9 and I was getting better, we'd moved up to a full-sized marimba and my father had to build a platform about a foot high for me to stand on to reach the keys. And that was also about the time I started playing the vibraphone as well. Yes, they were more expensive than typical band instruments, which is one of the reasons there aren't more vibes players around."

When Burton was in high school in the late '50s, Randolph was living in Evansville, about 40 miles from Princeton.

"I would go down to Evansville on weekends and sit in with whatever band would let me play with them. That's how I got to know Boots. And he would drive down to Nashville once a month or so and be on record dates with Elvis. And one day he told me there was this guitar player in Nashville who was going to make a jazz record and had this idea to use vibes and guitar, but there were no vibes players in Nashville."

The guitarist was Hank Garland, another Elvis session man. On Randolph's recommendation, Garland invited Burton, who was about to enter Berklee in the fall, to live in Nashville that summer, play clubs and perform on his LP, "Jazz Winds From a New Direction." Both Metheny and George Benson have cited that record as an inspiration.

Famed guitarist and record executive Chet Atkins also heard Burton and got him signed to a record deal. Not bad for one summer.

Burton studied at Berklee in 1960-61, then toured with George Shearing and Stan Getz and made a few recordings under his own name. He was perfecting his four-mallet technique, which gave rise to a more pianistic approach than that of earlier vibes greats like Lionel Hampton and Milt Jackson.

In 1967, Burton formed his Gary Burton Quartet, featuring electric guitarist Larry Coryell. The band made rock-influenced recordings such as "Duster" and opened for Cream at the Fillmore West.

"I was thinking about what kind of unique concept could I come up with that could be my signature, my sound. I knew it couldn't just be me and a bunch of guys playing some tunes. And at that point I had become a huge rock fan. I had discovered the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Stones, etc. So I thought, 'Well I like rock, I like classical, I like country,' and so the idea was to expand beyond the jazz borders.

"It sounds very tame to me now 40 years later; it doesn't seem at all that daring. But at that time, people were accusing me of being the devil incarnate for crossing those borders -- 'They're the enemy! How can do this? You were such a good jazz player!' "

With the onslaught of Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew" in 1969 and Mahavishnu Orchestra's "The Inner Mounting Flame" in 1971, jazz fusion was in full un-swing -- louder and heavier than Burton could ever hope to be, considering the relatively delicate sound of the vibes.

Burton explored other paths -- quiet chamber-jazz duets such as "Crystal Silence" with Chick Corea for ECM, gigs and recordings with Pat Metheny, who joined Burton's band in 1975, projects with the tango composer Astor Piazzolla.

Burton joined the faculty of Berklee in 1971, became dean and, by the time he retired in 2004, executive vice president. In April, the school will celebrate the 50 years since his first arrival at Berklee with an all-star concert.

As a longtime educator at one of the world's most prestigious jazz schools, Burton can speak more knowledgeably than most about the health of jazz. Is the patient is doing well, poorly or somewhere in between?

"I think somewhere between good and in between. It's never going to be perfect and it never dies either. Every decade or so you'll read an article about the death of jazz. I've heard this since the '50s, and it never actually happens. There's always a crop of very talented young players coming along that will be the next generation 20 years from now. That's been true since the beginning of the music, and will continue to be so."

Asked if late, great stars such as Davis, Duke Ellington and Getz are being replaced by musicians with equal drawing power, Burton answers: "Well I'll tell you who the most marketable people are today. It's Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Pat Metheny. Wynton Marsalis, he's another one. Then you've got another group of people close to that -- which I think I fall into, people that have been around for a while. And trust me, 20 years from now, after my generation has moved onto the jazz retirement home, the people who are building their careers now will be at that level."

Which brings us to Generations, which Burton will bring to the Guild this weekend. It includes the 21-year-old guitarist Julian Lage, who made his first record with Burton ("Generations") when he was 15, and a second recording ("Next Generation") that includes the rest of the group backing Burton at the Guild: Russian pianist Vadim Neselovskyi, bassist Luques Curtis and drummer James Williams. All are Berklee grads.

If some things never change in jazz, much has, Burton adds.

"It's become more global, it's become more concert-oriented [as opposed to clubs], and now the record business end of it is also going through cathartic change.

"The truth is, we're making more money now than we made 50 or 60 years ago. Successful jazz musicians in the 1940s, '50s were lucky to live kind of an upper middle class lifestyle, and probably didn't have much money saved. They got paid a few hundred dollars for a record date. They got paid a modest amount for concert appearances. Now if you look at the top names in jazz, everyone's a millionaire and a very astute businessman. They've got major business operations, houses, film scores, playing for audiences of 30,000 people at festivals."

That begs the question -- is Burton a millionaire?

"Well, yes I am. Several times over. I don't normally talk about that. But you asked the question. And that's not unusual. I've been in the business a long time. I never had what you call a hit record, like Chuck Mangione or the Dave Brubeck Quartet's 'Take Five.' But ultimately careers hopefully build to a point where financial security gets established. Which was much more rare back in the first 50 years of the world of jazz."

Critics Andrew Druckenbrod and Scott Mervis talk about music on "The Beat," available exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.