Background
Alan Grubner graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College with a B.A. in English, with a focus on contemporary American poetry. Without prior conservatory training, he was awarded a Graduate Assistantship Scholarship as the first violinist accepted into Berklee College of Music's Masters in Jazz Studies program.
His teaching spans two decades — as adjunct professor of violin and improvisation at Five Towns College, on faculty at Brooklyn Waldorf School, and in an active private practice. His pedagogy centers on non-judgmental, somatic awareness: the immediacy of inner and outer feedback as raw material for cultivating presence at the instrument.
As a performer, Alan has appeared on stage at Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium for fourteen sold-out concerts, and has performed and recorded alongside Eddie Palmieri, Jerry Douglas, Paquito D'Rivera, Christian McBride, Edmar Castaneda, Jason Lindner, Sam Bush, Tony Trischka, Nefesh Mountain, and Olivia Newton-John, among many others. His playing has been heard across genres that rarely share a stage: jazz, folk, bluegrass, ambient, Latin, and film.
His album Convergence led to a recorded conversation with multi-platinum producer Anthony J. Resta for the podcast Studio Secrets A to Z, in which Alan discusses his evolution as an improviser and his work in ambient and healing music. He records as a Spacious.FM artist, collaborating with founder Joshua Geisler and other luminaries in the ambient music world.
Alan's work at Open Strings Academy draws together his parallel lives as performer, educator, and IMS-lineage vipassana practitioner. He teaches from the conviction that the musical path and the contemplative path are, in the end, one path.
Winding Path
I came to music sideways. My formal training was in literature — contemporary American poetry, to be specific — and what I was learning there, without knowing it, was how to attend. To the line break. To the silence after the word. To what the poem was doing beneath what it was saying.
Music came next, and jazz after that. Berklee. Improvisation. And with improvisation came the confrontation that I suspect brings many players to a page like this one: the moment when technique runs out and something else is required. I didn't have a name for what that something was. I only knew I was afraid of it.
What changed wasn't a new method. It was a contemplative practice — IMS-lineage vipassana — that taught me to stay with what arose without flinching. The fear of the wrong note and the fear of impermanence turned out to be the same fear. And both yielded to the same practice.
I've performed at Carnegie Hall, toured with players across jazz, bluegrass, folk, and ambient music, scored films, and built a teaching practice over two decades. None of that is why I built Open Strings Academy. I built it because the crossing is real, and it's available to you at whatever level you're starting from.
Selected Performances & Appearances
Stages & Venues
Carnegie Hall, Stern Auditorium (14 sold-out concerts) · Lincoln Center · Grand Ole Opry, Nashville · Levon Helm Studios, Woodstock · Shanghai World Expo (2010) · Woodsongs, Lexington
Press
DownBeat · Rolling Stone · No Depression · Bluegrass Unlimited
Selected Collaborators
Eddie Palmieri · Jerry Douglas · Paquito D'Rivera · Christian McBride · Edmar Castaneda · Jason Lindner · Sam Bush · Tony Trischka · John Doyle · Larry Harlow · Chieli Minucci's Special EFX · Dana Leong · Nefesh Mountain · Olivia Newton-John · Garth Stevenson · Sonya Kitchell · Uyanga Bold · Joshua Geisler
Broadcast & Media
CNN · ABC Good Morning America · Sirius XM · WFMU · WKCR (New York) · WSM (Nashville) · WWOZ (New Orleans) · WNCW (Asheville) · Ditty TV (Memphis)
Podcast
Studio Secrets A to Z with Anthony J. Resta · On Convergence, improvisation, and ambient soundscapes · Recorded at Resta's Laurel Canyon studio