Bob Gluck - An accomplished and passionate pianist...

"An accomplished and passionate pianist in the most elusive tradition of avant-garde masters Cecil Taylor, Andrew Hill, McCoy Tyner, and Don Pullen. He's captured the magic of being at once sentimental and Space Pong crazy... [and] crafts a language of intense thinking, feeling, listening, and creating, mostly all at once." - Erik Lawrence, Chronogram (August 2008)

"Unsigned Musician of the Month" (June, 2009): ".. an engaging tapestry of living sound... Electric Brew [2007] is a welcome reminder of what magic can happen when rules are not so much broken, but taken out of the equation completely. Highly recommended." - Michael Gallant, Keyboard magazine's

After years of conservatory training, Bob Gluck's musical life dramatically changed after hearing Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa and Miles Davis' electric bands, early in high school. His musical work has evolved during the past decade to span several musical fields, among them jazz piano, live electronic musical performance using systems of his own design, multimedia installation, and musicology.

Bob's repertoire spans jazz performance both acoustic and with electronics and free improvisation, avant-garde concert music and music for electronic expansions of acoustical instruments, including the ram¹s horn, Disklavier (computer-assisted piano) and Turkish baglama saz. Bob Gluck is Associate Professor of Music and Director of the University at Albany Electronic Music Studio. He is an affiliate faculty member in the Judaic Studies Department and the College of Computing and Information.

Gluck is a pianist and composer. Bob Gluck's latest work includes a 2008 recording ("Sideways" on FMR) with the Bob Gluck Trio, featuring bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Dean Sharp; and solo performances of works for computer-assisted piano and electronics. 2008-2009 concerts will include both of these projects.

He is also writing a book about the early collaborations between jazz players and electronic musicians, especially Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi band with Patrick Gleeson, and the Richard Teitelbaum's duets with Anthony Braxton.

Bob Gluck has performed internationally, including at the Prague Spanish Synagogue (Prague, Czech Republic), Keele University (United Kingdom), Middlebury College, University of California at San Diego and Irvine, University of Ottawa, Lotus Music and Dance (New York City), Brown University, Deep Listening Space (Kingston, New York), Johns Hopkins University, The Flea Theater (New York City), Mobius Gallery (Boston), Dartmouth College, New Interfaces For Musical Expression (Montreal) and Bard College. Gluck's music on tape has been heard in Mexico City, Bucharest, Berlin and elsewhere. His work has been included in two "60x60" projects and on its 2004-2005 CD.

Gluck's multimedia installation works include 'Layered Histories' (2004), an immersive sound and video environment with Cynthia Rubin (shown at SIGGRAPH (Los Angeles), ACM Multimedia 2004 (New York City), Emmersive Gallery (Toronto), Prague Jewish Music (Czech Republic), ICMC (Miami), the Fine Family Gallery at the Marcus JCC, (Atlanta), Pixelerations (Providence RI), and the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale University; and 'Sounds of a Community' (2001 - 2002), in which visitors trigger and shape pre-recorded sounds by interacting with seven electronic musical sculptures.

His recordings include 'Stories Heard and Retold' (1998), 'Electric Songs' (2003) 'Electric Brew' (2007) and 'Sideways' (2008). His work has been discussed in the Computer Music Journal, Moment, The Forward, Organized Sound, Reconstructionism Today, Hadassah Magazine and in Seth Rogovoy¹s 'The Essential Klezmer'. His essays about the international history of electronic music, beyond North America and Europe have been published in Computer Music Journal, Leonardo Music Journal, Organized Sound, Journal SEAMUS, Leonardo, Living Music Journal, The Reconstructionist, Tav+, the EMF Institute, and elsewhere on the web.

Gluck's musical training is from the Julliard, Manhattan, and Crane schools of Music, the State University of New York at Albany (BA, 1977) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (MFA, 2001). His primary teacher of piano was Regina Rubinoff, first in the Juilliard Preparatory Division).

He is also a rabbi (a 1989 graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College) and he holds a Master's in Hebrew Letters from the RRC (1989, and a Master's in Social Work from Yeshiva University's Wurzweiler School of Social Work (1984).

Gluck also serves as Associate Director, Publications, of the Electronic Music Foundation and he is Executive Editor (along with Joel Chadabe) of the EMF Institute, a web-based virtual museum documenting the history of the field. He has held various senior leadership positions in the Jewish Reconstructionist movement.