RoBsBaR - Composer | Guitarist

Composer | Guitarist | Visual Artist | Writer | Filmmaker | Performance Artist | Multi-disciplinary Artist: Fusing musical genres and multimedia within contemporary instrumental guitar music.

RoB sBaR is an accomplished, award-winning composer, guitarist, visual artist and writer focusing on experimental, inventive approaches to multimedia and fusing musical genres, including contemporary chromatic and post-tonal solo, chamber and orchestral pieces, large-scale orchestral film scores, fully arranged jazz, rock, fusion and contemporary progressive guitar music. 

RoB resides in New York City and began composing and performing professionally in his teens, doing session work, teaching and performing.  RoB received a Bachelor of Music degree summa cum laude, studying jazz guitar and composition/arranging, as well as completing the Honors program at Temple University's Esther Boyer College of Music, where he was awarded membership in the Golden Key Honor Society.  There he studied jazz guitar with Tom Giacobetti and Ed Flanagan; jazz composition/arranging with Don Glanden, Ben Schacter and Larry McKenna; classical composition with Matthew Greenbaum, Ph.D., Maurice Wright, D.M.A., Richard Brodhead, Ph.D., and Mark Rimple, D.M.A.  He also studied guitar privately with Shrapnel/Tone Center recording artist Greg Howe, Lasers Edge recording artist Scott McGill and Jazz icons Pat Martino (Blue Note) and Jimmy Bruno (Mel Bay). 

RoB earned a Masters of Arts degree in music composition at Rutgers University, studying with world renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Charles Wuorinen and was awarded a Teaching Assistantship in Music Composition and Theory in his first year.  RoB studied film scoring and guitar performance at Berklee College of Music, attended the National Guitar Summer Workshop studying with guitar icons Vinnie Moore, Stanley Jordan and Mick Goodrick.  He also studied visual arts at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art.

Additional studies and master classes he pursued in composition with celebrated composers Aaron Jay Kernis, Harvey Sollberger, Jukka Tiensuu, David Felder, Mario Davidovsky, Charles Fussell, Austin Clarkson and George Russell; film score orchestration with Scott Smalley (Film Music Institute) and film scoring with Rick Baitz (The Manhattan Producer's Alliance), as well as performance studies with Wynton Marsalis, Max Roach, Billy Taylor, Bill Shindling, Magmus Andersson, Terry Bozzio, Frank Gambale, Larry Mitchell, Andy Timmons, Adrian Legg and Blues Saraceno.

RoB’s influences range from such guitar virtuosos as Allan Holdsworth, Steve Vai, Shawn Lane, John McLaughlin and Pat Martino; modern jazz composers John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea; contemporary classical composers Stefan Wolpe, Elliot Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Edgar Varèse, Igor Stravinsky and John Zorn; film composers John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Hermann, Ennio Morricone, Howard Shore, Philip Glass and Hans Zimmer; and alternative rock icons Bob Mould (Hüsker Dü), The Replacements, Robert Smith (The Cure), The Smiths, The Church and Sonic Youth: visual artists Wassily Kandinsky, Salvador Dali, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Robert Rauschenberg and Willem De Kooning; philosophers and writers Jean-Paul Sartre, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche and Thomas Pynchon.

RoB's creative output is largely derived from Modernist and Post-Modernist art, compositional, literary and philosophical movements. His academic studies involved the association of philosophy, music composition and contemporary abstract and avant-garde visual art movements, including Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism, Surrealism, Cubism, Futurism and the Bauhaus school. 

RoB released his highly praised debut CD, Wagon Wheels and Atom Bombs, with his band, The Rob Sbar Noesis (Aggregate Recordings), a virtuosic progressive rock/fusion instrumental trio that blends avant-garde and experimental forms of composition within a context of dynamic rock performances. The CD presents a unified, cumulative sensory and arts experience, incorporating the mediums of sound with written word and visual art concepts. Wagon Wheels and Atom Bombs received wide critical acclaim.  RoB has been featured on numerous compilation CDs including Shawn Lane Remembered Volume II (Lion Music), Higher and Higher: A Tribute To The Moody Blues (Mellow Records), A Tribute to Carlos Santana: Guitars Dancing in the Light (Mellow Records).

He has been interviewed and featured in many publications worldwide, including Guitar Player, Guitar World, 20th Century Guitar, Guitar Chef (Italy), Guitar Mania (Canada) and many others. He was selected as a Top 5 Finalist in the 2006 North American Rock Guitar Competition, presented by Guitar Player magazine and Gibson guitars.

RoB sBaR’s upcoming album, Ideological Explosions of the Absurd Hero (Aggregate Recordings), is Part 1 of a two-part project that combines sound, visual art/illustration, poetry/written word and spoken word, intended to function as a single creative vision. It features a wide variety of compositions from intense instrumental guitar music to acoustic pieces and large orchestrations and includes a significant line-up of performers, including Stu Hamm (Joe Satriani, Steve Vai), Will Calhoun (Living Colour), Atma Anur (Jason Becker, Marty Friedman, Ritchie Kotzen), Mariko Maranka (Madonna, Hans Zimmer, Cirque du Soleil), Alessandro Bertoni (Graham Bonnet Band), Jeff Bowders (Paul Gilbert), Cesare Valbusa (Andy Timmons, Tommy Emmanuel, Robben Ford), Jedd Cheblowski (Mike Stern, Vernon Reid) and Mark Feldman (Oz Noy). 

RoB was selected to be a part of the June in Buffalo Festival for Emerging Composers held in Buffalo, New York, where renowned pianist Marilyn Nonken performed his solo piano piece, Aerial Surveying.  He was commissioned to compose, conduct and perform the music for Sirens, a modern dance presentation in collaboration with celebrated choreographer Julia Ritter.  RoB was also commissioned to write a modern composition for Renaissance lute titled A Mosaic of Cement and Barbed Wire, performed at the Sarah Lawrence Summer Guitar Institute.  RoB’s piece, Like Giants Through a Keyhole, trio for flute, cello and piano was performed as part of the Network for New Music's Cross-Currents in Jazz and New Music: The Schooling and School of Stefan Wolpe series.  He was commissioned to compose a contemporary chamber piece as accompaniment to Hans Richter's 1927 Dadaist/Surrealist short film, Ghosts Before Breakfast, premiered as part of the Amphibian Concert Series at the Nicholas Roerich Museum in NYC.  

RoB was the Music Director and conductor for the Mondfleck Orchestra, Music Director and Composer-In-Residence for the Trash Can Society Theater Company and composer for improv theater group, The Glass Metropolis Project.

His music has been featured throughout film and television, including composing scores for many feature films, television, web and ad campaigns (Hyatt Regency, United Way, many others), and was featured on ABC, NBC, CBS MTV, VH1, Discovery, History Channel, PBS, et al.  RoB was a featured speaker at Music for My Web Series Panel as part of the BlogWorld & New Media Expo held at the Jacob Javits Center in NYC, and the ConTemplum series, addressing composition students on professional development. 

An accomplished teacher of composition, arranging, orchestration, music theory and guitar, RoB developed his own personal teaching concepts and methods for improving technique, chord/scale theory and counterpoint for various styles and genres of music. He has taught privately in music schools and at the college level, including as a Teaching Affiliate at Long Island University's Brooklyn Campus.  RoB is a well-known freelance, live, studio and session guitarist, composer, arranger and producer.

RoB is an endorsee of Morley pedals.  He is an ASCAP affiliated composer and publisher (Rob Sbar Music) and a member of both the International Alliance Of Composer's and the Independent Film Project (IFP).

A "compositional genius...a guitarist of frightening ability...one of the world's truly creative musical innovators." -Mike Sandomirsky (Guitar Mania)

“Imagine Zappa having actually learned modern fretwork techniques from his one time kid stunt guitarist Stevie Vai" - MJ Brady (Prognosis)