Gary Burton was born January 23, 1943, in Anderson, Indiana, and was almost entirely self-taught on vibraphone, developing his technique without a teacher to correct him into the conventional two-mallet grip. That circumstance led him, while still a teenager, toward the four-mallet independent-hand technique that came to be known as the "Burton grip," an approach to chording that let him voice full harmony and a moving bass line while still improvising a melodic line on top, effectively sounding like two or three players on one instrument. He made his recording debut at seventeen backing Nashville guitarist Hank Garland on the 1961 Columbia album Jazz Winds From a New Direction, cut during a period working Nashville sessions alongside Garland, Floyd Cramer, and Chet Atkins, and began recording as a leader for RCA Victor the same year, releasing his debut, New Vibe Man in Town, in 1962.

He toured with George Shearing's quintet in 1963, then spent 1964 to 1966 in Stan Getz's pianoless quartet, appearing on Getz albums including Getz/Gilberto #2 (Verve, 1966). In 1967 Burton formed his own quartet with guitarist Larry Coryell, bassist Steve Swallow, and drummer Roy Haynes (soon succeeded by Bob Moses), and the group's RCA albums Duster and Lofty Fake Anagram (both 1967) fused jazz improvisation with rock rhythm and instrumentation years ahead of the wider "fusion" movement, followed by A Genuine Tong Funeral (1968), a suite of Carla Bley compositions arranged and conducted by Bley herself with Larry Coryell, Steve Lacy, and Gato Barbieri. DownBeat named Burton its Jazzman of the Year in 1968, the youngest musician to receive the honor to that point.

The 1970s brought both his most personal record and his most enduring partnership. Alone at Last (Atlantic, 1971), a solo vibraphone recital, won Burton his first Grammy Award, for Best Jazz Performance, in 1973. In 1972 he recorded Crystal Silence for the newly founded ECM label with pianist Chick Corea, opening a duo partnership the two would revisit on record and in concert for the next four decades. Through the rest of the decade Burton led a changing quintet documented on Ring (1974, with bassist Eberhard Weber and guitarists Mick Goodrick and Pat Metheny), recorded duo albums with guitarist Ralph Towner (Matchbook, 1975) and with Swallow (Hotel Hello, 1975), paid tribute to Bley's writing on Dreams So Real (1976), and led the quartet date Passengers (1977, again with Weber and Metheny). He joined the faculty of Berklee College of Music, where he had briefly studied in 1960, in 1971, teaching vibraphone and improvisation. His second Grammy came in 1980, for the Corea duo album Duet (1979).

Burton and Corea's In Concert, Zürich, October 28, 1979 won the 1982 Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, and the pair's Lyric Suite for Sextet (1983), scored for jazz duo plus string quartet, was Grammy-nominated the following year. Burton became dean of curriculum at Berklee in 1985. Whiz Kids (1986) introduced two of his most notable student discoveries, pianist Makoto Ozone and saxophonist Tommy Smith, both still in their teens or early twenties when they joined his working quintet. Burton signed to GRP for the remainder of the 1980s, releasing Times Like These (1988) with guests including Michael Brecker and John Scofield.

In 1996 Burton was named Berklee's first executive vice president, a post he held until retiring from the college's administration in 2004. His recording career continued in parallel: Departure (1997) and Like Minds (1998, released 1999), a summit quintet album with Corea, Metheny, Roy Haynes, and Dave Holland, won the 2000 Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album; a track from the Corea duo album Native Sense (1997) won Burton the 1999 Grammy for Best Jazz Performance. He turned to tango on Libertango: The Music of Astor Piazzolla (2000) and For Hamp, Red, Bags, and Cal (2001), a tribute to the vibraphonists who preceded him (Lionel Hampton, Red Norvo, Milt "Bags" Jackson, and Cal Tjader), and explored classical repertoire with Ozone on the Grammy-nominated Virtuosi (2002). Burton published his autobiography, Learning to Listen, in 2013; it was later named Jazz Book of the Year by the Jazz Journalists Association.

Burton's final touring band, billed as the New Gary Burton Quartet with guitarist Julian Lage, bassist Scott Colley, and drummer Antonio Sanchez, recorded Common Ground (2011) and Guided Tour (2013, Grammy-nominated). The New Crystal Silence (2008), an orchestral expansion of the Corea duo repertoire, won the 2009 Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Album, and the duo's final studio album together, Hot House (2012), won Burton his seventh and last Grammy, for Best Jazz Performance, in 2013. He came out publicly as gay in a January 1994 interview with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air, becoming one of the few prominent openly gay musicians in jazz history. In 2016 he was named an NEA Jazz Master. Burton retired from performing in March 2017, at age 74, following a farewell tour with Ozone, after health issues cost him the perfect pitch and physical precision his playing had depended on.

Burton and Bobby Hutcherson are generally credited as the two vibraphonists who redefined the instrument's vocabulary in the 1960s, and Burton's contribution was largely mechanical as much as harmonic: his independent four-mallet grip let him comp chords, walk a bass line, and improvise melody simultaneously, a capability no prior vibraphonist had developed to the same degree, best heard on his unaccompanied 1971 version of "No More Blues." That technical foundation supported an unusually wide stylistic range across his career, from the amplified, rock-inflected fusion of his late-1960s quartet with Larry Coryell, to the spare, chamber-like intimacy of his ECM duo recordings with Chick Corea and Ralph Towner, to classical crossover repertoire with Makoto Ozone and tango with the music of Astor Piazzolla. As a bandleader he built a long record of showcasing young talent before they were otherwise known, giving early prominent exposure to Pat Metheny, Makoto Ozone, Tommy Smith, and Julian Lage, and his three decades on the Berklee faculty, rising to dean of curriculum and the college's first executive vice president, made him one of jazz education's most influential administrators as well as performers.