Robert Glasper
Robert Andre Glasper (born April 6, 1978) is an American pianist, record producer, songwriter, and musical arranger. His music embodies numerous musical genres, primarily centered around jazz. Glasper has won five Grammy Awards from 11 nominations.
Glasper's breakout album Black Radio (2012) peaked at number 15 on the Billboard 200 chart and won the Best R&B Album at 55th Annual Grammy Awards. The following year, he released its sequel, Black Radio 2. In 2015, he played keyboards on Kendrick Lamar's album To Pimp a Butterfly, and appeared on the soundtrack for the 2015 drama film Miles Ahead.
Outside of his own musical work, he has co-written or produced albums for Mac Miller, Anderson .Paak, Banks, Herbie Hancock, Big K.R.I.T., Brittany Howard, Bilal, Denzel Curry, Q-Tip, and Talib Kweli amongst others. He won the 2017 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics for his song "A Letter to the Free" featured in Ava DuVernay's documentary, 13th, along with Common and Karriem Riggins. Glasper also composed the score for the documentary film The Apollo, and composed the original score for Issa Rae's The Photograph.
He has also been an Artist in Residence at some of the most prestigious festivals and institutions worldwide, including the London Jazz Festival, North Sea Jazz Festival, The Kennedy Center, Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie Hall, and the Blue Note Jazz Club.
Musical style[edit]
Glasper's albums are centered on his work as a solo artist, and two bands: The Robert Glasper Trio (on piano Robert Glasper, drummer Damion Reid, and bassist Vicente Archer) as an acoustic jazz trio, and The Robert Glasper Experiment (Glasper, drummer Mark Colenburg, saxophonist/vocoderist Casey Benjamin and bassist Derrick Hodge) as an electronic act that defies genre norms from any single discipline. "That's what makes this band unique... We can go anywhere, literally anywhere, we want to go. We all have musical ADD and we love it."[13] With primary influences in neo-soul, hip-hop, jazz, gospel, and R&B, Glasper also has reinterpreted songs from rock acts Nirvana, Radiohead, Soundgarden, and David Bowie.[14] As a jazz artist, Rashod D. Ollison reviewed him after the release of Canvas as "a gifted jazz musician with a brilliant, energetic technique and a fresh, mesmerizing sense of melody and composition".[15]
Glasper claims that the music of Miles Davis has had a significant influence on his style throughout his career as a musician. Both the soundtrack for Miles Ahead and the tribute album Everything's Beautiful are clear indications of this influence. Glasper himself said: "I'm obviously influenced by Miles Davis – even just the psyche of how he thinks about music... how he moves through, and always wanted to reflect the times he's in. That's what I'm doing now. He opened that door."[16]