Burton Hable is a teaching artist who has worked with students of all ages in Iowa and Virginia since 2005. He has performed on trombone with orchestras, jazz bands, and community ensembles and conducted bands, orchestras, and choirs of all levels. He spent eight years directing bands in Iowa, helping build programs in Waterloo and Ankeny, before moving to Central Virginia in 2018. There, he worked with music students and ensembles in Charlottesville, Albemarle County, and Fluvanna County.
In 2026, Burton was appointed as Teaching Faculty in the Mead Witter School of Music at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Outside of music, he enjoys ice hockey, cooking, and adventures with his wife Chloe and daughter Sally.
Burton holds degrees in Music Education from Iowa State University (BM, 2009), VanderCook College of Music (MM, 2016), and Boston University (DMA, 2025). His teachers and mentors include Joel Poppen, Paul Brizzi, David Stuart, Mike Giles, Mike Golemo, Matt Smith, and Tony Kidonakis.
His research draws on Seymour Papert’s constructionist learning theory —people learn best through making and sharing tangible artifacts — and his dissertation investigated how students construct music knowledge in the context of school makerspaces. For his Master’s Project at VanderCook, Burton developed a curriculum for teaching improvisation by splitting a full jazz ensemble into small combos and introducing skills each week for students to incorporate into their own arrangements of jazz standards.