Matt Glaser | |
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 Glaser in 2006, Photo: Bob Travis | |
| Background information | |
| Genres | Jazz, bluegrass |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, educator |
| Instrument(s) | Violin |
Matt Glaser is an American jazz and bluegrass violinist. He served as the chair of the string department at the Berklee College of Music for more than twenty-five years. He is now the founder and artistic director of Berklee's American Roots Music Program. [1]
Glaser holds an M.Mus. degree from Tufts University. He has performed at Carnegie Hall with Stephane Grappelli and Yo-Yo Ma, and at the Boston Globe Jazz Festival with Gunther Schuller. He has also performed with Bob Dylan, Ralph Stanley, Lee Konitz, David Grisman, Mark O'Connor, Andy Statman, Jamey Haddad, Jay Ungar, Bruce Molsky, Darol Anger, Art Baron, and the International String Quartet Congress.
He is featured on the Grammy Award–winning soundtrack for Ken Burns's 1990 The Civil War documentary and the soundtrack for the 1978 film King of the Gypsies . He served on the board of advisors for Ken Burns's 2001 Jazz documentary and appears as a narrator in the film. [2] [3]
In 2013, he won the Artist Teacher Award [4] [5] from the American String Teachers Association (ASTA). Past recipients include Joseph Szigeti, Pablo Casals, Isaac Stern, Yehudi Menuhin, Dorothy DeLay, and Ivan Galamian.
In addition to founding his own musical group, called the Wayfaring Strangers (featuring Tony Trischka, Laszlo Gardony, and Tracy Bonham), he has been a member of the Central Park Sheiks, the New York Bluegrass All-Stars, and Fiddle Fever. He has recorded an album with fellow fiddle player Kenny Kosek and he has appeared on numerous other recordings.
He has authored two books: Jazz Violin and Jazz Chord Studies for Violin, and an instructional video, Swingin' Jazz Violin. [6]
Glaser lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. His notable students include Casey Driessen, Sarina Suno and Mads Tolling.
The Central Park Sheiks were a mixed influence band that formed in the early 1970s and released a single LP, Honeysuckle Rose. The band members included Bob Hipkins, Matt Glaser, Richard Lieberson, Bert Lee, and John Caruso. Marty Confurious replaced Caruso in the bands later years. The style they are most often associated with is urban and western acoustic swing music, but they played a great deal of country and folk inflected tunes, as well as original music by Hipkins, Lee and Lieberson. The band toured many colleges in the Eastern seaboard during their years together, and had a very successful final performance at New York's Loeb Student Center in New York. While not widely known outside of the eclectic music scene, the band achieved notoriety in Japan. The band was also associated with Samuel R Delany's Heavenly Breakfast. [7] because band member Bert Lee was part of Delany's communal band in the sixties.
With Skitch Henderson
The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashioned by African Americans in the United States. The banjo is frequently associated with folk, bluegrass and country music, and has also been used in some rock, pop and hip-hop. Several rock bands, such as the Eagles, Led Zeppelin, and the Grateful Dead, have used the five-string banjo in some of their songs. Historically, the banjo occupied a central place in Black American traditional music and the folk culture of rural whites before entering the mainstream via the minstrel shows of the 19th century. Along with the fiddle, the banjo is a mainstay of American styles of music, such as bluegrass and old-time music. It is also very frequently used in traditional ("trad") jazz. Banjo is also a common instrument for Caribbean genres like Biguine, Calypso and Mento.
The violin, sometimes known as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular use. The violin typically has four strings, usually tuned in perfect fifths with notes G3, D4, A4, E5, and is most commonly played by drawing a bow across its strings. It can also be played by plucking the strings with the fingers (pizzicato) and, in specialized cases, by striking the strings with the wooden side of the bow.
Pizzicato is a playing technique that involves plucking the strings of a string instrument. The exact technique varies somewhat depending on the type of instrument :
Jean-Luc Ponty is a French jazz violinist and composer.
Mark O'Connor is an American fiddle player and composer whose music combines bluegrass, country, jazz and classical. A three-time Grammy Award winner, he has won six Country Music Association Musician Of The Year awards and, was a member of three influential musical ensembles; the David Grisman Quintet, The Dregs and Strength in Numbers.
Darol Anger is an American violinist and founding member of The David Grisman Quintet.
William Charles "Diz" Disley was an Anglo-Canadian jazz guitarist and banjoist. He is best known for his acoustic jazz guitar playing, strongly influenced by Django Reinhardt, for his contributions to the UK trad jazz, skiffle and folk scenes as a performer and humorist, and for his collaborations with the violinist Stéphane Grappelli.
Tim Kliphuis is a Dutch violinist renowned for mixing gypsy jazz with classical and folk music.
Casey Christopher Driessen is an American bluegrass fiddler and singer. He plays acoustic and electric five-string violins, each of which has an additional low C string.
Joe Craven is an American freestyle folk, world and roots music multi-instrumentalist, singer and educator. He is the Director of RiverTunes Music Camp and a Co-Director of the Wintergrass Youth Academy. He plays a wide variety of string instruments, including fiddle, mandolin, ukulele, tres, cavaquinho, balalaika, as well as percussion, including a pickling jar, a credit card, or a jawbone. Craven is a well known sight at acoustic music festivals and, for many years, was violinist and percussionist for the David Grisman Quintet. Craven lists some of his influences being Jimi Hendrix, dumpster diving, Hermeto Pascoal, thrift stores, Frank Zappa, educator and aesthetician John Dewey, beachcombing, Carl Stalling, Eddie Palmieri, field recordings, Tiny Moore, Los Pleneros De Viente Uno, Darol Anger and The Horseflies.
Jazz violin is the use of the violin or electric violin to improvise solo lines. Early jazz violinists included: Eddie South, who played violin with Jimmy Wade's Dixielanders in Chicago; Stuff Smith; and Claude "Fiddler" Williams. Joe Venuti was popular for his work with guitarist Eddie Lang during the 1920s. Improvising violinists include Stéphane Grappelli and Jean-Luc Ponty. In jazz fusion, violinists may use an electric violin plugged into an instrument amplifier with electronic effects.
DGQ-20 is a 1996 compilation album by American musician David Grisman, recorded with his group David Grisman Quintet. Spanning the period from 1976 to 1996, this triple-CD set offers 39 songs, 18 of which were not released by Grisman before. Musicians include Tony Rice, Béla Fleck, Sam Bush, Mark O'Connor, Stephane Grappelli and others.
The Summit format is used in jazz to bring together performers on a particular musical instrument. Though these recordings often feature other musicians, the main instrument is focused upon in a celebratory way.
American fiddle-playing began with the early settlers who found that the small viol family instruments were portable and rugged. According to Ron Yule, "John Utie, a 1620 immigrant, settled in the North and is credited as being the first known fiddler on American soil". Early influences were Irish fiddle styles as well as Scottish and the more refined traditions of classical violin playing. Popular tunes included "Soldier's Joy", for which Robert Burns had written lyrics, and other such tunes as "Flowers of Edinburgh" and "Tamlin," which were claimed by both Scottish and Irish lineages.
Bluegrass fiddling is a distinctive style of American fiddle playing which is characterized by bold, bluesy improvisation, off-beat "chopping", and sophisticated use of both double-stops and old-time bowing patterns.
Jason Anick is an American jazz violinist, mandolin player and composer. He currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts, and teaches at the Berklee College of Music.
Jerome Henry "Butch" Baldassari was an American mandolinist, recording artist, composer, and music teacher.
Billy Contreras is an American jazz violinist and bluegrass fiddler, multi-instrumentalist, session player and educator.
Matt Combs is an American studio musician, record producer, composer, arranger, and author in Nashville, Tennessee.
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