Moscow’s Izzy Burns, 18, on her second music release: It’s ‘more of who I am’

An almost movie-like stroke of luck took Moscow native Izzy Burns from a music-loving and guitar-playing teenager to notable up-and-comping independent artist. Traveling for a volleyball game, she happened to be seated next to Mellad Abeid, who teaches in the music department at Gonzaga University. She showed him her music, he gave her a quick music theory lesson, and each was impressed with the other.

If not for that chance encounter, “I wouldn’t have released my first album so soon,” Burns said. “So soon” is the operative phrase here; Burns demonstrates a real talent for songwriting, and, as much as meeting Abeid has nudged her in the right direction, there’s no doubt she’d have shone either way.

At the beginning of March, at 18 years old, Burns released her second major work, an EP titled “A Heartbeat of Your Time.” Its five tracks span the whole of her recording career, though most were written in the last year. “It is all a COVID-era production.”

It’s difficult to situate Burns’ sound in a strict genre; her music draws heavily from folk, jazz and bluegrass, but contemporary indie clearly has a significant fingerprint in her sound, as well. “Each song is a little bit different as I’m trying to figure out where I fit and where I don’t fit,” Burns said.

Burns is excited about the changes her music has undergone with the EP. “I’m still developing my style every day as I write. But it definitely feels like it’s more of a step in the right direction. I love my first album a lot because it was the beginning of everything, but I feel like my EP really shows more of who I am and more of my creativity.”

The EP’s opening track, “Broken Compass,” is a testimony to life without direction. But that lack isn’t seen as a bad thing, rather an open-road type of freedom: “Don’t know where I’m going, but I’m going far / got a broken compass and an old guitar,” she sings confidently.

The track exists in a folk-heavy space padded by tap-your-foot beats and a straight-played banjo line. Burns’ vocals are focused and effective, but it’s her songwriting that makes the piece go. “Most of my music is very lyrically driven,” Burns said. “When I think of a word for a song, I already have a note to it, if that makes sense.”

If forced to choose, Burns’ favorite song on the EP is the title track, “A Heartbeat of Your Time.” It was written in memory of one of Burns’ local mentors and fellow performers, Paul Anders, who died in early 2020.

“I felt like it was my responsibility to get it out there and honor him,” she said. The track is also special because of her role in creating it: “I got to do more on it. I got to partially arrange some of it, and I thought that was really something fun and creative.”

As she learns more of the ins and outs of music writing and production (Burns will be studying music business in college starting in the fall), she becomes more involved in her own pieces. “I can hear things in my head, and sometimes I just don’t have the ability to make it happen organically.”

That’s where other experts, like her producer Abeid or Amplified Wax engineer Jimmy Hill, come in to help turn Burns’ art into the refined records that she releases. As time goes on and Burns becomes more of an expert on the technical side of music, she hopes to apply her skills to other artists’ work and to see that reflected back on her own.

Doing music production “for other people is a really good way to grow your own skills because you’re not so emotionally attached to something where you can kind of step back and look at just a song and really make things happen with it.”

Julien A. Luebbers can be reached at julienluebbers@gmail.com.