BIOGRAPHY.
I consider Albert Glinsky to be one of the finest American composers. . . I performed the world premiere of his symphonic poem, “Throne of the Third Heaven.” I have heard and seen the score of his piano concerto, and consider it a major contribution to the concerto literature. In my estimation, it compares most favorably with the Samuel Barber Piano Concerto.
—Conductor Walter Hendl
Albert Glinsky’s music has been heard at Lincoln Center, Kennedy Center, the Aspen Music Festival, Wolf Trapp, throughout Europe and the Far East, and with organizations as diverse as the Boys Choir of Harlem and the Zurich Chamber Orchestra. His works have been commissioned and premiered by such groups as the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia, Relache, the Cavani, Oregon, and Biava String Quartets, the Erie Philharmonic, and by conductors Walter Hendl, Eiji Oue, and Ignat Solzhenitsyn. The Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society commissioned his Allegheny Quartet to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the city of Pittsburgh. Glinsky’s dance works have been presented at Marin Ballet, Les Grandes Ballets Canadiennes, the Lexington and Wilkes-Barre Ballets, the Merce Cunningham Dance Theatre, at universities across the US, and with the Joffrey II Company in a three-season international tour of his ballet, Flights.
Glinsky's music is recorded on the RCA Red Seal, Koch International Classics, Centaur, BMG Catalyst, and Leonore labels, and is published by C.F. Peters, E.C. Schirmer, Hinshaw Press, and American Composers Alliance.
Glinsky has been the recipient of awards and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Smithsonian Institution, the Jerome Foundation, Meet the Composer, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the American Music Center, the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Music at La Gesse Foundation, the Haydn Foundation, and New York State CAPS (Fellowship). The Astral Foundation awarded him a career grant and a consortium commission for his Piano Concerto, and he was a Ucross Foundation resident artist in Wyoming. His prizes include awards from the Alienor International Competition in Washington D.C. and the Composers Guild Choral Competition.
Albert Glinsky is the author of Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage, with a foreword by Robert Moog (University of Illinois Press, 2000), which won the 2001 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award and received worldwide press acclaim. The book has served as a major inspiration for such works as Czech playwright, Petr Zelenka’s play, Teremin; American poet, David Wojahn's, Theremin: Solo and Command Performance; Canadian writer, Sean Michaels' novel Us Conductors; and the musical play, Unholy Secrets of the Theremin at the New York International Fringe Festival. Glinsky has presented lectures on the life of Leon Theremin across the US and in Europe, in venues ranging from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to a rave festival in Spain. He has appeared on the Discovery Channel, the A&E Network, CBS Sunday Morning, the Science Channel, History Detectives, National Public Radio, Canada's CBC network, England's BBC Radio, and on podcasts in the US and Europe. Glinsky is also the author of Switched On: Bob Moog and the Synthesizer Revolution, with a foreword by Francis Ford Coppola (Oxford University Press, 2022). He has contributed articles on Theremin and Moog for print and online magazines in the US and the UK.
Glinsky has served on the faculty of Montclair State University, was BMI Composer-in- Residence at Vanderbilt University, and has taught at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. He has been a Professor of Music at Mercyhurst University in Pennsylvania where he currently holds the title of Professor Emeritus. Raised in New York’s Greenwich Village by artist parents—American sculptors, Cleo Hartwig and Vincent Glinsky—he began composition studies at the age of 12 with Joan Tower. His teachers have included Hall Overton and Otto Luening, and he studied composition principally with Tower and David Diamond. He earned Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Juilliard School, and a Ph.D. from New York University where he worked in the University’s electronic music studios to compose music on a variety of analog and digital synthesizers. Glinsky is a member of the American Composers Alliance, Broadcast Music Inc., and the Author's Guild.