Calre Burson explores grandmother's escape from Germany with album

"I've always leaned towards poetic simplicity and subtlety in my music," songstress Clare Burson says, "wanting to express as much as I can with the fewest possible words and musical flourishes."

That minimalist approach is evident on her Rounder Records debut, 'Silver and Ash,' out September 14th.'Silver and Ash' is a concept album that imagines Burson’s maternal grandmother's life in Europe, from before her birth in 1919 to her escape from Germany in 1938. It also explores Burson’s own struggles with rupture, silence, guilt, empathy, and continuity.

For the project, funded by a stipend from a prestigious Six Points Fellowship, Burson visited her childhood home in Memphis, Tennessee, where she interviewed her grandmothers, and ventured to the homes of her ancestors in Germany, Latvia, Ukraine and Lithuania.

The album's ten tracks, produced by Grammy-nominated Tucker Martine (R.E.M., The Decemberists), feature Mark Spencer (Son Volt) on guitar, Tony Leone (Ollabelle) on drums and Andy Cotton on bass, and Burson's own lush string arrangements, showcase a voice Harp Magazine called "knowing... world-weary like Lucinda Williams’, expressive like Kathleen Edwards’, mysterious like Jolie Holland’s."

Hear "I Will/With You," "Everything's Gone" and "Goodbye My Love" from 'Silver and Ash' here:
http://www.myspace.com/clareburson

A classically trained violinist, Burson began playing guitar and writing songs while studying history at Brown University. After college and a year in Germany as a Fulbright Scholar, Burson moved to Boston, and eventually back to Tennessee. She spent four years in Nashville before moving to her current home in Brooklyn, where for two years she was a lower school teacher at the distinguished Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn Heights.

http://www.myspace.com/clareburson
http://www.clareburson.com/