Bob Gluck - Alumni

Bob Gluck is Assistant 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. After years of conservatory training, his musical life dramatically changed after hearing Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa and Miles Davis' electric bands. His recent work includes the design of live electronic musical systems for performance and installation. Bob's repertoire spans jazz performance integrating electronics and free improvisation, avant-garde concert music and music for electronic expansions of acoustical instruments, including the ram's horn, Disklavier (computer-assisted piano) and Turkish baglama saz. His current duet partner is bassist David Katz and his trio includes bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Dean Sharp.

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 2003 (Montreal) and Bard College. Gluck's music on tape has been heard in Mexico City, Bucharest, Berlin and elsewhere.

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), and Pixelerations (Providence RI); 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) and 'Electric Songs' (2003). His work has been discussed in the Computer Music Journal, Moment, The Forward, Organized Sound, Reconstructionism Today, Hadassah Magazine and in Seth Rogovoy's "The Essential Klezmer". Bob Gluck's main area of academic research is documenting an international history of electronic music, beyond North America and Europe. His essays have been published in 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 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.