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Feature Story
John Burr

Our Featured Artist is John Burr. I first met John a few months ago when he became a sponsor of the AnythingArts.com Newsletter (from which, by the way, John says he has received more response than any other single ad source in this area). John is an engaging man with a varied past and a wealth of professional experience. He, and his wife Wendy, an artist and Realtor, moved to Sarasota six years ago from the Maryland/DC area.

We lunched last week at the Drunken Poet Café, downtown. I learned about John’s early musical training, his stint in the Air Force, the fact that he had the first HAM TV station in Maine; which lead to recording and audio and film production, that he plays trombone and is a pilot. He has worked behind and in front of the camera with large corporations like IBM and Xerox and has appeared at the White House, the Kennedy Center and traveled the world performing.

These days, John is a professional voiceover coach and instructor. With studios in both Sarasota and Washington, John has a busy schedule helping experienced and would-be vocal artists hone their craft. He offers a 4.5 hour introductory workshop for people that think they might like to give voiceover a try (the cost of the workshop is just $95). The course covers audio books, characters & accents, voices for video games and even training for professionals and politicians needing to become more polished for interviews and presentations. All students get an evaluation and John’s critique of their abilities and potential. Of course, one-on-one training is the next step for those wanting to take it seriously.

I enjoyed my time with John at lunch and learned a lot of things that I could write about. However, I visited his website and it says it so much better and succinctly that, well, it is below for you to enjoy. Thanks for lunch John. And for anybody out there thinking about doing voiceover professionally or just wanting to be a better speaker, give John a shout. (Rick Hughes)

John Burr has more than 30 years of experience as a recording engineer/producer, as a musical and theatrical performer/director, and as a professional trainer/coach. He has written and produced scripts in all media, and has directed many well-known national performers. His many years of working as a recording engineer, editor, and producer have given him an in-depth understanding of every stage of the production process.

The training and coaching he has provided to executives and entrepreneurs has earned him many kudos in the business community, which includes Marriott Corporation, Xerox Corporation, Danaher Corporation, and Black and Decker Corporation, among others, as well as for many diverse smaller companies.

His transition to coaching voiceovers came about as a result of requests by several Washington voiceover performers to help them develop their skills to a higher level, after he had coached them on scripts he was producing for his clients.

John received his musical training at the Eastman School of Music, baccalaureate education at the University of Maine, and post-graduate work at American University. As singer/assistant conductor of the U.S. Air Force Band Singing Sergeants and performer/musical director for American Educational Theater Association and USO, he toured nationally and internationally for several years. As an actor/singer, he performed in several professional stock company productions, and performed in over forty operas with the Washington Opera.

The uniqueness in his approach to training comes from many years of applied language dynamics and basic musical characteristics to the process of teaching students how to spontaneously express themselves, how to understand and interpret scripts and how to communicate with others in a natural, believable, purposeful, and convincing manner. His new book, The Script Interpreter’s Handbook, due out in 2010, reflects this approach.