Glenn Tucker is a member of the the lineage of Detroit pianists. He is known for enthusiastic versatility and a balance between youthful energy and dedication to history. He has performed music representing the entire jazz canon both as a leader and sideman. He was mentored by Claude Black and studied with Geri Allen at the University of Michigan. He also cites Detroit pianist Harold McKinney as a major influence. Other teachers include Tad Weed, James Dapogny, Marilyn Mason, and Chris Foreman.
Glenn grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, starting piano lessons with Mary Bates and joining Dr. Thomas Strode’s Ann Arbor Boychoir at age 8 following his older brother’s lead. In middle school he picked up clarinet and was exposed to jazz in the Ann Arbor Public Schools Summer Music program led by Sean Dobbins. He then studied with Paul Finkbeiner at the Ann Arbor School for the Performing Arts.
In high school, Glenn added the tenor saxophone (studying with Jack Wagner) while also returning to the piano under the tutelage of Brian DiBlassio. Glenn played his first professional jazz gig at age 15 with 1920s dance orchestra Phil Ogilvie’s Rhythm Kings. This began his relationship with early jazz scholar James Dapogny. Shortly before his 16th birthday Paul Keller recommended him for a gig with Toledo bassist Clifford Murphy, who in turn introduced Glenn to master pianist Claude Black.
During Glenn’s years at Community High School, he rose quickly on the local jazz scene. In addition to frequent gigs at Murphy’s Place in Toledo, he performed with all of the weekly bands (Paul Keller Orchestra & Ensemble, salsa band Los Gatos, swingtet Easy Street Jazz Band, and P.O.R.K.) at the Firefly Club in Ann Arbor. This versatility has been a signature throughout his career. Glenn studied at Vincent York’s York University, eventually performing professionally with York. During this time, Glenn subbed for teacher Tad Weed at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge in Detroit.
Glenn co-founded the Cool Moose Orchestra with trombonist Connor Otto, which was an all-student big band that performed monthly at the Firefly Club. Glenn led the band and wrote over 100 arrangements for the group. Other youthful experiences from this period included punk-ska band Mad Hot Dance Hall and funk outfit the True Funk Soldiers, which morphed into the Hip Bop Experiment.
Rather than attending college in New York, Glenn decided to stay in the local scene and attend the University of Michigan. While at Michigan, he studied with jazz piano legend Geri Allen, who imbued in him a passion for the jazz tradition and a drive to be creative. During this time he was exposed to a wide range of music and musicians, while also learning from gigs in the local jazz scene. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in the spring of 2012, moving to Detroit shortly thereafter.
Following a 2010 visit to Paris, Glenn developed a budding interest in the pipe organ. After signing up for elective organ lessons at UM, he was placed in the studio of legendary organist and pedagogue Marilyn Mason. Due to Prof. Mason’s motivation and his early classical training, he went on to earn a Master’s degree in organ performance in 2013, culminating in a recital at Hill Auditorium. Music from this recital was later broadcast on a July 2016 edition of NPR's Pipedreams. From 2013-2016 he was successor to Mason as organist at the First Congregational Church in Ann Arbor.
Glenn’s stature as a pianist, Hammond organist, and arranger steadily rose on the Detroit scene from 2012-16. He is a favorite sideman to a who's-who of Detroit jazz veterans: George "Sax" Benson, Wendell Harrison, Allan Barnes, Leonard King, George Davidson, Ralphe Armstrong, Marion Hayden, Larry Smith, Ron English, etc. He has also performed on several occasions with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and from 2014-2016 he played keyboards for R&B great Michael Henderson, including accompanying guest appearances by Jean Carne among others. His sophomore album Determination was released in 2015 by Mack Avenue subsidiary Detroit Music Factory. A duet collaboration with the legendary George "Sax" Benson, Dreamers, was released on Benson's 87th birthday in February of 2016. In fall of 2017, he released Abundances, a trio project with bassist Marion Hayden and master drummer George Davidson.
In 2016, Glenn was selected as pianist for the Thelonious Monk Institute, a two-year fellowship at UCLA under the direction of Herbie Hancock. While at the Monk Institute, he got a chance to travel to Panama and Cuba and to spend time with Hancock, Wayne Shorter, James Newton, Kenny Burrell, scholar Robin D. G. Kelley, Jimmy Heath, Jeff "Tain" Watts, Terri Lyne Carrington, Danilo Pérez, Dick Oatts, Jabali Billy Hart, and other jazz greats. While living in LA, Glenn worked frequently with vocal legend Barbara Morrison and guitarist Jacques Lesure, among others.
In December of 2017, Glenn was diagnosed with ME/CFS, a debilitating auto-immune condition that also sidelined Keith Jarrett during the 90s. Against all odds, Glenn graduated from UCLA in June 2018. Glenn is on indefinite hiatus from recording and public performance while he courageously fights this disease. He has over four albums worth of material which he plans to record as well as a sheet music book of original compositions he plans to publish when his health improves.
Epilogue
In March 2022, Glenn wrote an opinion article published by the Michigan Daily advocating for common-sense reforms to improve access to healthcare for patients with post-viral illness, an umbrella term which includes ME and Long COVID, which has overlapping diagnostic criteria. (He submitted three more articles in 2022 and 2023, which were rejected, the first for dubious reasons, and the others for no stated reason.)
Local medical leaders [ALLEGEDLY] repeatedly refused to read the article, instead responding by [ALLEGEDLY] violating Glenn’s medical privacy against his explicit wishes, admitting to ordering an unlicensed accountant to give him medical advice (multiple possible felonies), explicitly endorsing a physician who had previously admitted to both incompetence and misconduct on record, and engaging in psychological manipulation by making numerous deliberate false claims, all as an apparent display of power.
In order to distract himself from what a licensed mental health professional referred to as “textbook symptoms of post-traumatic stress,” Glenn had the idea to organize a benefit concert of his music to raise money for Long COVID mutual aid. On August 25, 2022 (Wayne Shorter’s final terrestrial birthday), the Blue LLama jazz club in Ann Arbor presented a concert organized by Glenn (who was too sick to attend), Nick Collins, and Jesse Kramer, which featured saxophonists Rafael Leafar and Jake Shadik, guitarist Ralph Tope, pianist Rick Roe, bassists Kurt Krahnke and Eric Nachtrab, and drummers Jesse Kramer, Jonathan Barahal Taylor, and Alex White. The event raised thousands of dollars for the COVID-19 Longhauler Advocacy Project.
Between February 2023 and May 2024, Glenn wrote a 77-page report (including ten pages of citations) documenting the prevalence of the ME and Long COVID, detailing his own experiences—including widespread misconduct, egregious incompetence, and often fairly explicit discrimination—attempting to access adequate healthcare, and solutions other places have implement to address these problems. He contacted dozens of local attorneys who collectively chose to either pretend not to be able to read at an eighth grade level or actually cannot, unanimously failing to comprehend the legal services and disability accommodations requested. He then sent the report (which he is more than happy to share, provided you don’t give off the vibe you will get him sued) to a number of local government and academic officials, who [ALLEGEDLY] either repeatedly refused to read it, or are now on record explicitly endorsing—or perhaps refusing to entertain even a theoretical possibility of—the aforementioned widespread misconduct, incompetence, and discrimination.
A Detroit drummer friend of Glenn’s, Kayvon Gordon, moved to the New York City area circa 2018, and, unbeknownst to Glenn, started bringing Glenn’s original music to rehearsals and gigs around town. From 2023-25, the Nicole Glover trio with Kayvon and bassist Tyrone Allen II performed Glenn’s 2013 song Resilience at a number of venues around NYC, including Small’s. They recorded a version of the song on their 2025 album Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, and performed it alongside three of Glenn’s other songs during their weeklong May 2025 run at the Village Vanguard.
Bedridden since 2018, in an average year, Glenn reads roughly 100 books (including audiobooks), studies roughly 70 albums (listening instrument by instrument and learning lyrics and vocal inflections), and listens to at least 52 newly released albums all the way through. In 2021, 2023, and 2025, he grew out his hair and donated it to kids with cancer and alopecia. He attempts to balance living with an openness to the possibility of a partial or even full recovery and living with an acceptance of indefinite worsening severe chronic illness, exacerbated by widespread government-approved and taxpayer-funded medical misconduct.