David Burge, 83, passed away April 1, 2013. He was an American pianist, conductor and composer. As a performer, he was noted for championing contemporary pieces. Burge studied at the Eastman School of Music and the Cherubini Conservatory, Florence as a Fulbright scholar. While on the faculty at the University of Colorado in Boulder during the 1960s and 1970s, he founded and directed the Colorado Festival of Contemporary Music, and was also Musical Director and Conductor of the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra. During that period, George Crumb collaborated with Burge while writing Makrokosmos, a series of four volumes of pieces for piano. The Nonesuch recording of Makrokosmos, Vol. I was nominated for a Grammy. After leaving the University of Colorado, he chaired the Piano Department at the Eastman School of Music for many years. Over his career, he gave more than 1,000 concerts in the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, composed more than 100 works, authored the book Twentieth-Century Piano Music (Shirmer Books, 1990), wrote prize-winning columns for Keyboard Magazine, Clavier and The Piano Quarterly, and published the novel Vanishing (1999. )In early 2002, Burge and Crumb were appointed to a joint residency at ASU. He accepted visiting professorships not only at many universities and conservatories in the United States but also in Denmark, Turkey, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Sweden, and Korea. In 1993, Burge moved to San Diego with his wife, Liliane Choney, and served as composer-in-residence for the San Diego Ballet. His ballet scores became increasingly well known outside the San Diego area, with over thirty performances in the United States and abroad.