Jazz Articles about Bob Gluck

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Bob Gluck Trio: Returning

by Henry Smith
September 4, 2011

The piano trio can be a difficult format for free playing. It is too easy for the piano, so easily a dominating instrument, to overshadow the bassist and drummer, rendering them as backup to the more harmonically complex keyboard. This is fine, and an enormous amount of great music has been made in this format, but when it comes to more exploratory veins of jazz, it is difficult for a group to exhibit the simpatico required for simultaneous creativity and, ...

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Bob Gluck Trio: Returning

by Karl Ackermann
August 31, 2011

The piano trio, in one form or another, has been a jazz staple since the 1930s, and consequently skews toward the familiar. Fortunately, there are those atypical artists who invite a deeper dive for the uninhibited. Nothing could be more challenging, interesting and listenable than the music Bob Gluck creates within that formation. Like his Something Quiet (FMR Records 2010), Gluck's Returning is a brilliant collection of uniquely modern jazz. Throughout, it is a passionate and riveting performance with rhythmic ...

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Bob Gluck: Something Quiet

by Glenn Astarita
February 5, 2011

Julliard-trained pianist Bob Gluck's heart lies within the adventurous free jazz uprising of the 1960s and electronic music. This harmonically appealing acoustic date subliminally intimates his penchant for both genres, an album framed in a cunning fusion of ambient, jazz improvisation and concrete song forms. Gluck and bassist Christopher Dean Sullivan engage for a subtle, introspective and largely temperate spin on Herbie Hancock's classic, “Dolphin Dance." The pianist launches the piece with an animated sequence of chord ...

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Bob Gluck: Something Quiet

by Karl Ackermann
December 29, 2010

Thoroughly explaining the Julliard-trained Bob Gluck would be an exhaustive analysis. An accomplished composer of electronic music, a Rabbi, an educator and historical writer, he ventured deeper into jazz with Sideways (FMR Records 2008). Only Gluck himself remains from that recording's trio, a customary piano trio configuration but with Gluck's various synthesizers included. Something Quiet presents saxophone and bass to compliment Gluck's piano on a solely acoustic outing. It is a highly original and brilliantly creative collection of free jazz ...

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Bob Gluck Trio: Sideways

by Hrayr Attarian
July 12, 2009

Great art and in particular great music does not neatly fit in narrowly defined categories. Such is the case with the Bob Gluck Trio's Sideways. The music is a mix of different jazz styles with an overall strong classical flavor.

The CD contains nine pieces: three long bass-dominated ones, each over 10 minutes; and six shorter piano-driven tunes. Whether playing original compositions or standards the trio, by its improvisational skills and interpretation, make the music extremely personal and unique. To ...