Transcendence Plays Music of Pat Metheny

Pianist Bob Gluck, bassist Christopher Dean Sullivan, and drummer Karl Latham are Transcendence – and release a new album, Music of Pat Metheny

Bob Gluck is a pianist par excellence as well as a composer, educator, author, and Rabbi. He just recently retired from teaching music at the University of Albany.  His musical training came from Juilliard, the Manhattan and Crane Schools of Music. In addition to his performing and teaching, he has authored books on the music of Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, and Paul Winter.  In 2024 University of Chicago published Pat Metheny: Stories beyond Words in which Gluck explores Pat Metheny’s creative process. This July 2025 FMR Records will release his trio Transcendence’s new album the Music of Pat Metheny, which features five compositions by Metheny as well as two others.

JB:  Talk about your first exposure to Pat Metheny and what drew you into his playing and composing.

BG:  I first heard Pat Metheny play when he was a member of Gary Burton’s band, in 1974. Gary was doing clinics at colleges and these would be paired with a concert. I was aware of Pat’s own early albums, but the ones that first really resonated with me were Offramp,80/81, and Rejoicing. When Offramp was released, I thought it was one of the most sonically beautiful recordings I had ever heard. The eclectic mix of compositions mapped well to my own eclectic musical tastes, the rhythms were infectious, and the sound of Pat’s Roland guitar synthesizer soaring over everything else just took my breath away. The two other albums caught my interest because of the involvement of musicians in Ornette Coleman’s circle, Charlie Haden, Dewey Redman, and Billy Higgins – and I greatly appreciated, along with Pat’s free-spirited approach to the music. 

JB:  You just published a wonderful book on Pat Metheny (Pat Metheny: Stories beyond Words) and his creative process. Was it from your research for the book that this album came from, or did your work with his music inspire the book? 

BG:  Thank you. This is my third book with the University of Chicago Press. The newly released album, Transcendence: Plays Music of Pat Metheny, was recorded before I had even thought about writing a book about Pat. We became acquainted thanks to our shared affection for Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi band (the topic of my first book), and late one night following one of his Side-Eye trio concerts, he handed me a copy of his latest Pat Metheny Songbook. I was working hard on a project of my own music (Early Morning Star, FMR, 2020), but began to play my way through nearly the entirety of his book just for fun. As usual, this led to playing some of the music during gigs, first as a piano-bass duo with Christopher Dean Sullivan, and then as a trio, adding drummer Karl Latham. This really got me inside the music, and I realized that a number of issues I wanted to write about could be found right within this music, so I asked Pat what he thought about my doing a book, and he agreed. The book is a blend of the insights I gleaned ”through my fingers” as a keyboardist, through listening, reading the historical record of Metheny interviews, and dialoging with Pat and others about the music and his personal history.

JB:  You open the album with his classic “Question & Answer” from his trio album with bassist Dave Holland and drummer Roy Haynes of the same title.  Pat also plays it on his Trio-Live as well as opening his Like Minds album with Chick Corea with it. What about this song that draws you in so deeply? 

BG:  It is simply a really fun tune to play. Like many of his compositions, it is designed for improvisation; the chords mostly shift very subtly, juxtaposed with a stepwise bass movement characteristic of Pat’s writing, which allows for a lot of open space to solo wherever one wants to go. The two sections are bridged with rapidly changing chords that are interesting to navigate or push back against. The pulse remains in this steadily forward-moving 3/4 meter, making it a great vehicle for trio interaction.

JB:  I enjoy your version of “Afternoon” from his Speaking of Now album.

BG:  Again, thank you. A theme of my set lists has been selecting tunes, many of which were recorded with rich orchestration, and reducing them to bare bones and thus ready for me to better understand and re-interpret them. “Afternoon” is fundamentally a vocal tune, and Richard Bona’s singing on the album is movingly expressive. I love the lilt to the tune’s rhythmic feel and melody, which is what drove our interpretation. Playing as a trio meant that the beat could be treated with much elasticity and, more generally, interplay between the three musicians. Bassist Steve Rodby once explained that playing with the Pat Metheny Group could for him sometimes be what I describe in the book as “a mélange of melody and rhythmic feel that can at times draw upon popular music, played with the looseness, flexibility, and interaction of jazz musicians.  That’s really the way we treated “Afternoon.” 

JB:  You spoke of being moved by his Offramp album. I’m sure that is why you do its title track as well as “The Bat Part II” the reworking of “The Bat” from 80/81?  Both your version of “Offramp” as well as Pat’s are filled with such energy.

BG:  Yes, Offramp is such a longtime favorite album of mine. I heard some of the music played live on the Pat Metheny Group tour around the time of First Circle. The two very different treatments you mention of “The Bat” go to my sense that Pat Metheny’s music can invite a wide breadth of interpretation. That “The Bat” and “Offramp” can cohabit the same recording – consider how the album opens with the frenzied “Barcarole,” followed by the infectious “Are You Going With Me” – is testimony to Pat’s wide aesthetic range. I treated “The Bat” as akin to a Bach chorale with a folk-like sensibility, and it has a deep emotionality, maybe ironic feeling that builds and then resolves. “Offramp” was a natural vehicle for the more open improvisation and collective interplay that has long appealed to me. In a sense, it is like an Ornette composition in that it opens with an angular melody comprised of a series of motifs and then it can go wherever the musicians want to take it; I’ve long enjoyed that approach. My Roli keyboard is very different from Pat’s Roland guitar synth, but it allows the elasticity and slipping and sliding of a fretless bass. The timbre I’ve chosen draws upon the free movement between pitch and distortion that I most appreciated about Jimi Hendrix and has just enough, but not too much, kinship with Metheny’s Roland sound.

JB:  Bassist Christopher Dean Sullivan and drummer Karl Latham play superbly on the album.  What do you appreciate most about these two musicians?

BG:  Chris Sullivan and I have played together in many settings (often with drummer Tani Tabbal) since 2010, when he subbed for Michael Bisio in my trio that also included drummer Dean Sharp. Chris can seemingly follow me anywhere, and we easily engage in a lot of free play, cat and mouse games, and the like while playing, and it’s a trip. Karl has been the perfect drummer to fill out the trio, a format I enjoy a lot. He’s right in the groove at one moment, creating sonic flourishes the next, and periodically pushing back rhythmically. I really like the chemistry between the three of us, and chemistry and flexibility are really the secret ingredients I’m looking for in a band.

JB:  The Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett songs are beautiful.  What drew you to include them on this album?

BG:  Chris and I recorded a duet version of “Dolphin Dance” back in 2011, on Something Quiet (otherwise a trio session with saxophonist Joe Giardullo). We had it on our set list following the release of my book You’ll Know When You Get There: Herbie Hancock and the Mwandishi Band (2012), and it periodically returns. We gave it another spin during the sessions represented on Transcendence Plays Music of Pat Metheny. The Keith Jarrett composition “Everything That Lives Laments” dates to Jarrett’s “American” quartet (first a trio) with Charlie Haden, Paul Motian, and then also Dewey Redman. This was my favorite of Keith Jarrett’s bands, and I’ve played portions of its repertoire at various times. A 1972 live recording that included an expanded version of this tune caught my ear, and it entered my set lists. It is a very Jarrett-like suite comprised of contrasting moods, and at its core are cyclical chord changes (and some stepwise bass movement) that can be approached however one wishes. 

JB:  Why close the album with “Roof Dogs” from the Unity Band album?

BG:  Our rationale was two-fold. The first part is very personal. The final concert I attended with my dad was the Unity Band. It was a terrific concert; Chris Potter is a wonderful saxophonist, and Antonio Sanchez can do just about anything. After the show, my dad got to meet Pat, and their interchange remains one of my favorite memories of my dad, who died the next year. Beyond that, “Roof Dogs” is just a romp in the playground. The bass vamp is infectious while a little off kilter, something I accentuate, so it’s particularly fun to play. It offers an opportunity to call forth Karl’s wide range at the kit. Chris holds down the center around which Karl and I go at it. Among Chris’ gifts is his ability to really capture the pulse while brimming with melody. It seemed intuitively right to situate such a joyous piece as the closer.

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