Robert Glasper (piano)

Robert Andre Glasper (born April 5, 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 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, The Kid Laroi, Banks, Herbie Hancock, Big K.R.I.T., Brittany Howard, Bilal, Denzel Curry, Q-Tip, and Talib Kweli, among 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 venues including the London Jazz Festival, North Sea Jazz Festival, The Kennedy Center, Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie Hall, and the Blue Note Jazz Club. Glasper's earliest musical influence was his mother, Kim Yvette Glasper, who sang jazz and blues professionally. She took her son with her to club dates rather than leave him with babysitters. She was the music director at the East Wind Baptist Church, where Glasper first performed in public. He performed during services at three churches: Baptist, Catholic, and Seventh-day Adventist. Glasper has said that he first developed his sound in church, where he learned his own way to hear harmony and was inspired to mix church and gospel harmonies with jazz harmonies. Glasper attended Elkins High School in Missouri City, Texas, and the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. In tenth grade he performed with the jazz band at Texas Southern University. He was in the second Vail Jazz Workshop in 1997, and went on to attend the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York City. At the New School, Glasper met neo-soul singer Bilal. They began performing and recording together, which led to associations with a variety of hip-hop and R&B artists parallel to Glasper's emerging jazz career. According to Glasper, he became interested in hip-hop after listening to A Tribe Called Quest. Glasper's playing career was launched in earnest whilst still studying at The New School in New York when he started touring as a sideman with some of the established greats of the scene (bassist Christian McBride, and trumpeters Terence Blanchard and Roy Hargrove). At the same time, Robert was forging a friendship with his New School-mate Bilal, as well as a musical bond that saw them embedded in a burgeoning hip-hop and neo soul movement alongside era-defining artists such as Jill Scott, The Roots, and J Dilla—during which time Glasper became music director for Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def). Glasper released his first album, Mood, in 2002 on the Fresh Sound New Talent label. Mood features six original compositions alongside versions of the jazz standards including Herbie Hancock's "Maiden Voyage". Primarily a piano trio recording, with Bob Hurst on bass and Damion Reid on drums, the album also features saxophonists Marcus Strickland and John Ellis, along with the vocalist Bilal. Around this time, Glasper recorded with Bilal at Electric Lady Studios for the singer's unreleased but widely leaked second album, Love for Sale. In 2005, Glasper released his debut on Blue Note Records, Canvas, with what was to become his regular piano trio lineup of Vicente Archer on bass and Damion Reid on drums. The album features nine original compositions alongside a cover of Herbie Hancock's "Riot". His third album, In My Element, was released in 2007 and includes songs written in honor of Glasper's mother ("Tribute") and hip-hop producer J Dilla ("J Dillalude"). The pianist also revisits Hancock's "Maiden Voyage" in fusion style, moving between contemporary and classic as it segues into a version of Radiohead's "Everything in Its Right Place", and quoting Duke Ellington's "Fleurette Africaine". Glasper's 2009 album, Double-Booked, is divided between songs performed by Glasper in an acoustic piano trio format, and his groundbreaking electric group, The Experiment, with Derrick Hodge, Casey Benjamin, and Chris Dave. The album features guest vocals and spoken-word appearances by Bilal and Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def). The track "All Matter", which featured Bilal, received a 2010 Grammy Award nomination for Best Urban/Alternative Performance. In February 2012, Glasper released his fifth album Black Radio, which featured performances by a lineup of neo-soul and hip-hop artists including Lupe Fiasco, Bilal, Lalah Hathaway, Erykah Badu, and Yasiin Bey. Black Radio was met with both commercial success (a No. 10 debut on Billboard's Top Current Albums chart) and critical acclaim, with Rolling Stone declaring that it "feels like a blueprint forward", and went on to win the 2013 Grammy for best R&B album. In 2012 a concert at the Village Vanguard was recorded on video and published on YouTube. In November 2012, Black Radio Recovered: The Remix EP was released with five remixed tracks from the prior album, including remixes by Questlove, Solange, Georgia Muldrow, Pete Rock, and 9th Wonder. In October 2013, Glasper released Black Radio 2. The core remained the Robert Glasper Experiment, featuring Glasper on keyboards, Derrick Hodge on bass, Mark Colenburg on drums, and Casey Benjamin on vocoder and saxophone. Guest vocalists included Common, Brandy, Jill Scott, Marsha Ambrosius, Anthony Hamilton, Faith Evans, Norah Jones, Snoop Dogg, Lupe Fiasco, and Emeli Sandé. Notably, Lalah Hathaway and Malcolm-Jamal Warner were featured on a cover of Stevie Wonder's "Jesus Children of America", a dedication to the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings. The track would go on to win the Grammy for Best Traditional R&B Performance in 2015, whilst the album was nominated for Best R&B album. On June 16, 2015, Robert Glasper released Covered, a return to his acoustic piano trio format alongside musicians Damion Reid and Vicente Archer. The album features cover songs, drawn from an eclectic variety of artists, including Radiohead, John Legend, Kendrick Lamar, and Joni Mitchell. The album was recorded live at Capitol Studios in 2014. Covered was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album. 2015 saw Glasper and Lauryn Hill co-produce Nina Revisited... A Tribute to Nina Simone, an all-star tribute album pegged to the release of Liz Garbus's documentary What Happened, Miss Simone? The album features artists bringing a contemporary reimagining of Nina Simone's catalogue including contributions from Usher, Common, and Mary J. Blige. In 2015, Glasper served as producer, composer, and arranger for the film Miles Ahead, a biopic documenting the life of jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, whom Glasper cites as being one of his major musical influences. The soundtrack primarily consists of arrangements and interpretations of some of Davis's most well-known compositions, with the exception of a few tunes written by Glasper himself, and won him the 2017 Grammy for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media. In 2016, Glasper was able to pay further tribute to Davis, releasing Everything's Beautiful on May 27, 2016, his first with Columbia Records and Legacy Recordings. The album serves as a tribute to Davis by way of remixes and reinterpretations of several of his original works. The album debuted in the top ten Billboard Hip Hop and R&B charts, the highest Miles Davis charted according to Rolling Stone. Although Davis died in 1991, he is credited as a co-artist of the