Robert Gluck

Bob Gluck is an expressive pianist joining lyricism and abstraction, and an innovator in the use of electronics.

About Me

Pianist Bob Gluck is a pianist and writer whose repertoire spans jazz, live electronic music, and avant-garde concert music. Karl Ackermann (All About Jazz) wrote: “As a composer and player, Gluck ranks with the likes of Andrew Hill and Cecil Taylor… “Something Quiet” [FMR, 2011, with Michael Bisio and Dean Sharp] is completely original, artistically spontaneous, and intellectually challenging.” Jazz Review describes his subsequent FMR recording “Returning” as displaying “an intensity and sensitivity that is spellbinding.”

The latest of Gluck's eleven recordings is “Early Morning Star” (FMR 2020, with Andrea Wolper, Kinan Azmeh, Ken Filiano, and Tani Tabbal). Previous recordings include “Infinite Spirit: Revisiting Music of the Mwandishi Band” (FMR, 2016, with Billy Hart, Eddie Henderson, and Christopher Dean Sullivan), and three sets of duets with, respectively, drummer Tani Tabbal (”At This Time: Duets,” 2017), saxophonist Andrew Sterman (”Tropelets,” 2014), and fellow pianist Aruan Ortiz (”Textures and Pulsations,” 2012), on Ictus Records. The New York City Jazz Record finds in “Infinite Spirit” “moments of pure poetry and ecstasy from all members of the quartet. Like Hancock, Gluck is a master of electronics, as well as a talented acoustic jazz pianist… a fresh and personal imprint on complex music and propelling it into the present day.”

Gluck is author of two books published by University of Chicago Press, “You’ll Know When You Get There: Herbie Hancock and the Mwandishi Band” (2012) and “The Miles Davis ‘Lost’ Quintet and Other Revolutionary Ensembles” (2016). “The Musical World of Paul Winter” (Intelligent Arts ebook) was released in 2019. Gluck’s collaborators have included Tani Tabbal, Billy Hart, Christopher Dean Sullivan, Ken Filiano, Joe Giardullo, Eddie Henderson, Ras Moshe Burnett, Aruan Ortiz, Neil Rolnick, Dean Sharp, Andrew Sterman, Eddie Allen, Michael Bisio, and Jane Ira Bloom.

Raised in New York as a conservatory student and political activist, Gluck's influences are as diverse as Herbie Hancock, Cecil Taylor, Jimi Hendrix, Johann Sebastian Bach, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Gluck has discovered a unique way to marry interests in electronic music with his love of jazz. He studied music at the Julliard, Manhattan, and Crane schools of Music, the State University of New York at Albany, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Bob Gluck is Professor Emeritus at The University at Albany. For more info, see: http://www.electricsongs.com

My Jazz Story

The first jazz show I ever attended was the Herbie Hancock Sextet, when I was 15. I had just left the Julliard Preparatory Division, having recently heard Jimi Hendrix for the first time. I was in search of new musical horizons and its been a fascinating journey from that point onward.