Biography

Christopher Eastburn is a versatile musician, director, and award-winning composer. Chris’s composing, arranging and orchestrating is a synergistic culmination of his work as a producer and choral director, composition training, and wide ranging stylistic interests from early music, to traditional folk, jazz and contemporary classical music.  He creates energetic, melodic, and emotionally-visceral vocal and instrumental music. To commissions and collaborations he brings attention to detail and expert musicianship together with a perspective of emotional depth and understanding and respect for the range of human experience--inspiring contemporary ballet and theatre scores to engaging choral pieces and colorful orchestral arrangements.

In 2008, Chris enjoyed crafting the music for a ballet score Newport Stories, an emotional journey through Newport, RI's history with chorus, instrumental ensemble, and tape of ambient recordings, commissioned by Newport RI's contemporary ballet company Island Moving Co. for their 25th anniversary.    The text for the piece is from Newport poets and interviews by a contemporary reporter. 

"A pure, intense sense of place.  A pure, intense sense of time.  Tunes and images you can't get out of your head--and don't want to.  What more can you ask of a show?"
John D. Donahue, professor Harvard’s Kennedy School

Also for Island Moving Co., Chris wrote the music for Consent to Gravity, a ballet score for string quartet & vocal quartet performed at the Providence Performing Arts Center, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the RISD museum, Pace-McGill in NYC, MassArt in Boston and by the faculty quartet as part of Music at Port Milford chamber music festival in Ontario.

"Chris Eastburn's score for the Providence String Quartet was one of the most successful new musical works for dance I've heard in ages." --Debra Cash, dance critic for National Public Radio's Here and Now

Recent orchestration commissions include 2 arrangements for orchestra and treble chorus for the Jacksonville Children's Chorus, Florida.  One of these, "Jazzy Old St. Nick, a hip swing version of a Christmas favorite" is being published by Hal Leonard and will be available for the Christmas 2009 season.  Also arranged by Chris for orchestra and treble chorus,  a song by Nick Page called "Stars, Songs, and Faces" was performed twice at Carnegie Hall, NYC during the 2007-2008 concert season.

Also in 2008 Chris collaborated with Caitlin Corbett Dance Co., creating the score (studio instrumental) for Tom's Wealth: A Dance for the Masses, premiered at the Tsai Performance Center in Boston.  Commissioned by Caitlin Corbett Dance company, the score is a series of fascinating instrumental recompositions based upon traditional American folk melodies.

"Chris Eastburn's delicious twisting of Americana favorites."
Boston Pheonix on the music for Tom's Wealth

 Additionally in the past year, Chris was commissioned by the Moses Brown School with funding from the Rhode Island Council for the Arts to write the vocal and string ensemble score for Moses Brown and the Story of the Slave Ship Sally, a breakthrough dramatic exploration of Rhode Island's historical involvement in the Triangle (slave) Trade.

Past commissions include a piece for the nationally renowned PALS Children's Chorus celebrating the town of Brookline's 300th Anniversary (libretto from Brookline poet Margo Lockwood)  performed at Boston’s Jordan Hall, a score for As You Like It for the MIT Shakespeare Ensemble, orchestra arrangements for the von Trapp family’s newest generation of singers, scores for Tufts University faculty choreographer Danny McCusker, and a co-commission with Eliza Moore “Castles in the Air” premiered by PALS at the American Choral Directors Association conference at Harvard’s Sanders Theater.

In the Boston area, Chris directs the much heralded Family Folk Chorale.  Under his direction the group has grown from 15 to 60 singers, ages 3 to 83, and has had a 40 family waiting list.  The chorale has sold out shows at the historic Club Passim, the Regent Theatre, and the Museum of Our National Heritage, done benefit concerts for the U.N. World Food Programme, the Arlington-Teosinte Sister City Project, etc. and has performed with Robbie O’Connell (of the Clancy Bros.), Tracy Grammer, Bill Staines, Sol Y Canto, Mark Simos and Scott Alarik (folk reviewer for the Boston Globe, Sing Out!, and NPR’s Here and Now Program).

Each summer, Chris conducts the choir at Music at Port Milford summer music school and festival.  He has studied at Connecticut College, Yale University, Aspen & Bowdoin Festivals and Boston University (M.M. ’97) where the faculty elected him to the National Music Honor Society.  Ensemble (non-directing) experience has included collaborations with singer-songwriter Eliza Moore and her Celtic-influenced folk band (arranging, guitar, and vocal harmonies), the Boston Secession (tenor), tenor section leader for the adult choir at the Church of the Redeemer in Chestnut Hill and in BU’s Marsh Chapel choir, rock band William Wants a Doll (lead guitar, composer, and vocalist), and the Portland Early Music Consort (lutenist and arranger). 

Chris enjoys composing for and working with a variety of ensembles and making music with people of all ages and walks of life.