Robert Gluck

Robert Gluck (born 1955) is a writer, educator, rabbi, pianist and composer whose repertoire spans jazz, live electronic music, and avant-garde music. Bob Gluck is currently an Associate Professor for the Department of Music at The University at Albany.^[1]

Early life

Raised in New York as a conservatory student and political activist, Gluck spent many years away from music, leading a life as a rabbi. Gluck's musical training is from the

Bob Gluck's return to composing electronic music in 1995 and to the piano in 2005 marked a new beginning in his unusual career. With influences as diverse as Herbie Hancock, Jimi Hendrix, Johann Sebastian Bach, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, Gluck has discovered a way to marry interests in electronic music with his love of jazz. Gluck designs his own software interfaces for interactive musical performance and multimedia installation,^[2] including the sound installations 'Layered Histories' (2004), an immersive sound and video environment with Cynthia Rubin ^[3] and 'Sounds of a Community' (2002), in which visitors trigger and shape recorded sounds by interacting with electronic musical sculptures.^[4]

His music has been performed internationally. Karl Ackermann (All About Jazz) has written: “As a composer and player, Gluck ranks with the likes of Andrew Hill and Cecil Taylor… Something Quiet is completely original, artistically spontaneous, and intellectually challenging.”^[5] Allan Kozinn (New York Times) wrote that Gluck is "an accomplished jazz pianist" who played with "virtuosic fluidity."^[6] Keyboard magazine named him June 2009 “Unsigned Artist of the Month.” Gluck's musical collaborators have included reed players Kinan Azmeh, Andrew Sterman, Joe Giardullo and Ras Moshe; bassists Christopher Dean Sullivan, Ken Filiano, and Michael Bisio; drummers Tani Tabbal, Billy Hart, Karl Latham, and Dean Sharp; computer musician/composer Neil Rolnick; and digital visual artist Cynthia Beth Rubin.

Published works

Bob Gluck is perhaps best known for his in-depth jazz writing. His essays^[7] have appeared in Computer Music Journal, eContact!, Leonardo Music Journal, Leonardo, Organized Sound, Tav +, Journal SEAMUS, Review Zaman (France), Magham (Iran), Ideas Sonicas (Mexico), and elsewhere.

Books and recordings:

• Stories Heard and Retold (1998) ^[8]
• Electric Songs (2001) ^[9]
• Electric Brew (2007) ^[10]
• Sideways (2008) ^[11]
• Something Quiet (2011) ^[12]
• Extended Family (Neil Rolnick, 2011) ^[13]
• Returning (2011) ^[14]
• You’ll Know When You’ll Get There: Herbie Hancock and the Mwandishi Band (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
• Textures and Pulsations (with Aruan Ortiz, 2012) ^[15]
• Tropelets (with Andrew Sterman, 2013) ^[16]
• The Miles Davis Lost Quintet and Other Revolutionary Ensembles (University of Chicago Press, 2016)
• Infinite Spirit: Revisiting Music of the Mwandishi Band (2016) ^[17]
• At this Time (with Tani Tabbal, 2017) ^[18]
• Early Morning Star (2020) ^[19]
• Miles Davis, Il Quintetto perduto e altre rivoluzioni (Miles Davis, the Lost Quintet and other revolutions) (Quodlibet Chorus, revised Italian edition, 2020)

References