The University at Albany Department of Music is pleased to present faculty member Bob Gluck in a solo recital, Music for Piano and Electronics, on Saturday, February 7, 2009 at 8pm in the Recital Hall of the Performing Arts Center on the uptown campus. The concert is part of Gluck’s continuing exploration of interactive performance using traditional acoustic instruments. Gluck delves into the interplay between human-machine dialog and musical creativity, improvisation and a balance between tradition and change.

The program will feature the premiere performances of a newly commissioned work by noted composer Neil Rolnick. This featured composition, titled 'Faith' for piano and computer (2008), is a stylistically eclectic romp through an amalgam of styles, from lyrical to abstract to barrel house, and provides a dizzy interplay between acoustic piano, digital processing and pre-recorded material. The work is truly a tour de force for the performer who navigates a mix of through-composed and improvisational sections.

Rolnick is a composer living in New York City and a professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where he has been founding chair of the Integrated Electronic Arts (iEar) program. His music has been previously commissioned by the string quartet Ethel, violinist Todd Reynolds, singer Joan La Barbara, the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China, baritone Thomas Buckner, Paul Dresher’s Electro-Acoustic Band, American Composers Orchestra and the Albany Symphony.

Three additional works will round out the program. ‘Seq Transit Parammers’ is a 1998 work for two computer-assisted pianos by Richard Teitelbaum, a pioneer in live electronic music performance and Professor at Bard College. In this work, performance details (what note, how loud…) of music played by the pianist, improvised in response to a notated score is tracked by a special digital device. A computer uses the information to add a wide range of embellishments and musical gestures, played on a second digitally equipped piano, to create a multi-layered tapestry of sound.

In ‘Waking the Sleeping Giant’ (1972/2008), Gluck builds upon musical elements of a 1972 composition by Herbie Hancock to craft a structured improvisation for solo piano and electronics. Hancock’s original five-movement composition consists of improvisational segments stimulated and interconnected by a series of melodic and rhythmic phrases around which an ensemble coalesces. Gluck’s commentary on the original work features a variety of sound elements including piano with real-time digital processing, computer-generated ornamentation of what is being played, multi-track playback of real-time recorded sound clips, and arpeggiated sequences generated by a Moog Little Phatty synthesizer whose filter parameters are shaped algorithmically in response to features of the piano performance (how fast, how large the chords, length of melodic line...).

Alireza Mashayekhi’s ‘Short Stories’, opus 106, no. 1 (1994), a four-movement lyrical work for piano, is the only piece on the program without electronics. Mashayekhi, a champion of contemporary music in Iran and Professor at Tehran University, draws upon traditional Persian modes (dastgah) for his musical material.

Robert Gluck has championed works for piano and live-electronic performance systems. He studied piano at the Julliard, Manhattan and Crane schools of Music and the University at Albany (BA, 1977) and completed a degree in Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (MFA, 2001). Gluck has most recently given recitals of works for piano, computer-assisted piano and electronics in Ottawa, Prague, New York City, Middlebury, San Diego, Irvine, Albany and Keele (UK). His recording of music for piano and electronics, 'Electric Brew' (2007) features works by Benjamin Broening, Shlomo Dubnov, Tzvi Avni, Ofer Ben-Amots and Robert Gluck. His 2008 recording ‘Sideways’ on the British jazz label, FMR features bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Dean Sharp.

Tickets are $10 for the general public, $8 for seniors & UAlbany faculty/staff and $5 for students and may be purchased through the Performing Arts Center Box Office. For further information, contact the Box Office at (518) 442-3997 or visit the Performing Arts Center website at www.albany.edu/pac.

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