Erik Lawrence reviews "Sideways," the new CD release by The Bob Gluck Trio, on the FMR label. Chronogram, July 28, 2008.

"For some of us in the early 21st century, tradition is the sound of freedom. Such is the case with this new work led by Albany's Bob Gluck, 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. Here and there, Gluck surprises the listener with the blast of a shofar (ramšs horn), doctored voice samples, and what he calls "electronic expansion of acoustic instruments." This techno addition is a surprising delight. With the able-bodied support of Albany's Michael Bisio on bass and the Hudson Valley's excellent Dean Sharp on drums and percussion, Gluck crafts a language of intense thinking, feeling, listening, and creating, mostly all at once.

Eight delicately structured originals and three tasty, personalized covers of tunes by Ornette Coleman and Joe Zawinul find these players conversing in ways that are sometimes silent as well as soaring and singing. These are seasoned improvising musicians who have found and honed their own communication skills and brought them to a greater whole. Therešs no "follow the leader" and no "letšs make weird sounds" going on. This kind of mature freedom is very elusive to players and listeners alike‹which is the tradition of improvised music, after all."

Seth Rogovoy reviews "Electric Brew" (2007), Berkshire Jewish Voice, August 11, 2008.

Excerpt: "His music is on the cutting-edge of acoustic-electric fusion, spanning jazz, classical, electronics, sampling, and, of course, Jewish music... Gluckšs latest recording, "Electric Brew" (Electronic Music Foundation, www.emf.org), takes its overall inspiration from Miles Davis's landmark album, Bitches Brew, but uses the singular musical vocabulary that Gluck has invented and elaborated upon for the last decade or so."

Jeff Waggoner reviews "Sideways," the new CD release by The Bob Gluck Trio, on the FMR label. albanyjazz.com, April 16, 2008.

"Anyone who knows anything about Bob Gluck knows he's in for a delight when he plops the CD "Sideways" into the player. It surprises and engages throughout. Gluck... is a polymath, and it shows... he and his trio move the music's rhythms, melodies and timbres through history. It's a contemporary sound that provides timeless beauty." ... No small part of the success of this CD belongs to Gluckšs fellow artists in his Albany-based trio: Bassist Michael Bisio and percussionist Dean Sharp. Bisio's improvisational boldness and brilliance stands him in good stead in any context... Gluck never uses a sound in isolation ­ each tone is part of the picture, providing context and comprehension. Sideways wonšt come out of my player for a while."

Peter Aaron reviews "Sideways," the new CD release by The Bob Gluck Trio, on the FMR label. Roll: Creative Living in the Hudson Valley, June, 2008.

"Released on the overseas FMR label, the Bob Gluck Triošs Sideways hits from many directions to bring together three of the upstate jazz scenešs topmost forward-thinking players; the set pairs the Capital Regionšs pianist and electronics whiz Gluck and famed bassist Michael Bisio with the Hudson Valley's always-somewhere percussionist Dean Sharp.

A marvel of confident restraint, the music here is characterized by vast tracts of openness and a steadily rumbling undercurrent courtesy of Sharp and Bisio. The tension-thick title piece would be the perfect soundtrack to some dark thriller; fraught with the foreboding menace of Bisiošs slithering line and the leaderšs Chinese water-torture plinking, it will easily bring your neck hair to rapt attention. Things get hot and spiky here and there, especially when Gluck blows a shofar on the lengthy reading of Joe Zawinul's "Unknown Soldier" that opens the disc (it sounds like he does it again on the version of the Ornette Coleman classic "Lonely Woman" at the close, though the liner notes make no mention of it). But for the better part of its 60 minutes, however, Sideways is content to live in the moment as Gluck, Bisio, and Sharp converse with calculated simpatico, each playing his hand like a shrewd shark, content to wait it out and let the chips fall where they may. Making this is one game youšll want to be in on. www.electricsongs.com"

"Heavy Weather": Greg Haymes lists "The Music of Weather Report" with Bob Gluck, Keith Pray and Brian Melick in the Albany Times Union, April 3, 2008.

"Adventurous University at Albany music professor and pianist Bob Gluck recently released his latest CD -- "Electric Brew" on the Electronic Music Foundation label -- which finds him playing piano, shofar and electronics on music inspired by Miles Davis' classic 1969 jazz fusion album, "Bitches Brew" ... But Gluck is turning his attention to another band of groundbreaking jazz fusioneers in concert at the Recital Hall at UAlbany's Performing Arts Center ... as he pays tribute to Weather Report..."

In April, 2008, the Italian "Zawinulfans.org" website, dedicated to the music of the late great pianist Josef Zawinul, posted announcements and descriptions of the "Music of Weather Report" show by Bob Gluck, Keith Pray and Brian Melick here and here (which included a notice about the new "Sideways" CD. Zawinulfans also posted an autobiographical statement about Gluck's current work.

Alan Kozinn, New York Times, 'The Electronic Shofar,' Classical music event listings, February 2, 2007.

"... some contemporary composers have found its [the shofar] strong, piercing timbre useful, among them Alvin Curran and Bob Gluck, who have each created works that combine the shofaršs timbre with electronic sound processing. They share a concert at which they will perform their recent shofar works."

Joel Chadabe, "The Electronic Shofar," program description and artist interview, February 1, 2007. The interview text can be found at the Arts-Electric web-based Arts magazine.

Kurt Gottschalk, allaboutjazz.com, March 2007, review of "The Electronic Shofar".

"Over the course of three solos and a duet, the composers did what they could with the instrument, which has a range of four or five notes, like a pair of tone shepherds. The pieces developed into a kind of musical game: intone and rest, triggering different sorts of filters or prerecorded sounds. If the point was to explore the possibilities of electronics with the shofar, the discovery may have been that those possibilities are few. The strongest piece of the night was Gluckšs "Electric Brew/Shofarrr," an improvisation built around two themes from Miles Davis' Bitches Brew with prerecorded double-bass phrases. That piece built nicely from its disparate elements and benefited from the simple variety of sound sources."

Greg Haymes, "Sound sampler: 60x60 showcases a wealth of brief, contemporary compositions," Albany Times Union, February 9, 2006.

Solo Concerts and Sound Installations