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]
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.
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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]
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.
