Garrett Gleason
American guitarist, composer, and bandleader working across evolving textures, improvisation, and emotionally direct instrumental music.
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Most Recent Release
All Takes Shape
Lightning from the Chest
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Performance Schedule
Music
All major works streaming on major streaming platforms. Full discography available on Bandcamp. Subscribing on Bandcamp for $5/month gets you discounts on all discography, early access to new releases, and exclusive access to monthly improvisational releases. headcannonrecords.bandcamp.com
Shows
August 6, 2026
Garrett Gleason, Andy Pitcher, Eladio, Gleason/Pitcher/Rojas
Hart Bar — Brooklyn, NY
August 7, 2026
Garrett Gleason (2 sets: solo, trio), Hujiking
Galactic Panther — Alexandria, VA
August 8, 2026
Garrett Gleason (2 sets: solo, duo), Ben Levin, Parazoa
The Parlour — Providence, RI
About
Visceral, vulnerable music for curious people.
Garrett Gleason is an American musician who creates guitar-centric music that embraces evolving textures, sound manipulation, emotional melodies, and off-kilter improvisation. Gleason’s live shows involve live looping, effecting those loops, and making massive, full-ensemble sounds that blossom from seeds planted throughout the show.
As a composer, Gleason has released a large catalogue of music through his own Head Cannon Records, through experimental labels Akar Music and TAR, and through contemporary classical label PARMA Recordings. He has two main compositional approaches: in the first, he writes music for either ensemble or himself and sets out to record it in studio settings; in the second, he improvises with a musician and then constructs music with the tracks from the improvisation playing the main compositional role with added arrangements woven throughout. He has released collaboration albums with Sanjay Mishra (of Jerry Garcia fame), Broadway composer Adam Guettel, Nigerian drum superstar Olaolu Ajibade, and many others.
As a performer, he has toured internationally as the guitarist for the American Pops Orchestra and the NATO Symphony, the multi-stringed instrumentalist in The SpongeBob Musical, and a bandleader in a myriad of his own projects.
Gleason currently directs the music program at Proctor Academy in Andover, NH, and performs his original work in summers on the US east coast.
"Guitarist Garrett Gleason has developed a reputation in D.C. as one of the city's most versatile guitarists, able to slide between traditional rock, jazz and out-there improvisational rock with ease." - Rudi Greenberg, The Washington Post
"The equivalent of a Christopher Nolan film for your headphones." - Michael Whiteside, Fecking Bahamas
"Of course, the power is thrilling, but [Gleason] has a gift as an arranger for tenderness, melancholy, humor, and many other things that don’t generally tug the heart in a rock configuration." - Adam Guettel, on Gleason’s Myths and Hymns
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