[
Date Prev][
Date Next] [
Thread Prev][
Thread Next]
[
Date Index][
Thread Index][
Author Index]
Re: Remembering Composer (and live looper) Dr. Richard Zvonar
Dr. Z was THE BEST. I miss him. Thanks for posting, Rick.
==== dB ==============
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick Walker" <looppool@cruzio.com>
To: "LOOPERS DELIGHT (posting)" <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
Sent: Friday, May 31, 2013 1:49 AM
Subject: Remembering Composer (and live looper) Dr. Richard Zvonar
*I was just remembering Dr. Richard Zvonar today with great fondness (and
more than a little sadness
that he's no longer with us).
I found this biography/obituary of him and wanted to share it with anyone
who didn't know of his important
work, artistically.
R.I.P. Dr. Richard Zvonar 1946-2005
*Rick Walker*
*
Dr. Richard 'RZ' Zvonar
Composer Richard Zvonar, 1946-2005
by E. "Doc" Smith‚ Aug. 05‚ 2005
Review it on
NewsTrust<http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://www.beyondchron.org?itemid=343>
"I'm sad to report that Richard "RZ" Zvonar has passed away after a long
bout with cancer.", wrote good friend Steve Ellison last night. "He was a
breath of fresh air to me when I moved out here, and was a big help and
very supportive over the years." Indeed, I'll miss him too, as will
countless others who benefited from his vast musical and electronic
knowledge, from Jon Hassell, to Diamanda Galas to the Grateful Dead.
Zvonar once told me of how he first arrived in California from New
England, nearly broke and living out of his car. Yet his determination,
conviction kept him going. He succeeded, earned a doctorate, and became
one of the most respected innovators in his field.
Richard Zvonar was a composer/performer and intermedia artist who
specialized in electroacoustic music. Some of his significant early
influences included Louis and Bebe Barron's electronic sound track to the
1956 film Forbidden Planet, the Wizard of Oz ("Pay no attention to the man
behind the curtain"), and the Witch Doctor and Chipmunk recordings of
David Seville.
During his freshman year as an Aeronautics and Astronautics major at MIT
the Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan. Intensive guitar practice and first
attempts at song writing ensued.
Boston was not a major center for avant garde music in those years (has it
ever been?) but Zvonar pursued an autodidactic education courtesy of the
electronic music and new music bins at the record department of the
Harvard Coop. Recordings of Stockhausen, Cage, Oliveros, Reich, Riley,
Subotnick, and the Columbia-Princeton crowd were as influential on his
musical thinking as the music of Zappa, Hendrix, the Beatles, the Who, and
other '60s pop experimentalists.
Zvonar's undergraduate thesis was a short film for three synchronized
projectors. During this period he also began composing tape music.??His
first performances of electroacoustic music, using quadraphonic sound and
tape delay systems, as well as several short theater pieces, came while a
student at Cabrillo College in the Santa Cruz area. This supportive
community college environment was an ideal springboard into graduate
study, and Zvonar was accepted to the composition program at US San Diego.
His teachers included Pauline Oliveros, Bernard Rands, Roger Reynolds,
Robert Erickson, F.R. Moore and others, all active contemporary music
thinkers and practitioners.
Zvonar emerged from academia after seven years with a PhD in Composition
from UCSD and a brain filled unto bursting. Zvonar's work at this time
included purely electronic music, musique concrete, pieces for live
performer and tape, and intermedia performance works. His Doctoral piece
was a 45-minute intermedia theater piece based on the memoirs of a
schizophrenia German judge ("soul murder"), combining multi-screen slide
projections, kinetic staging, choreography, and a mix of electronic and
processed vocal sound played through a multichannel sound system.
In 1980 Zvonar started a five-year collaboration with singer Diamanda
Galas, recording and performing works for solo voice, live electronic
processing, and multitrack tape. The two split in 1985 and Zvonar began
working with Macintosh computers and MIDI systems for composition and
performance.
For several years after his move to Los Angeles in 1986 Zvonar was part of
the technical staff of Good Sound Foundation, researching and promoting
the use of high-quality multichannel sound systems for live performance.
He also worked as an independent consultant and software developer for
clients such as Pauline Oliveros, Jon Hassell, the Grateful Dead, sound
artist Max Neuhaus, and Marc Canter's Media Band. In 1994 he started
working with Steve Ellison's company, Level Control Systems, bringing
similar concepts and technologies to the world of commercial
entertainment. The work with LCS included training and technical support
for theme parks and Broadway and Las Vegas shows.
Also during the 1990s, Zvonar's work with live signal processing continued
in the context of the "ambient groove and spoken word" band Cosmic Debris.
Live recordings of the group's performances have been compiled into
several CDs (available from MP3.com), and a studio remix project under the
name of Alias Zone was released commercially, debuting at the #1 position
in the New Age Voice chart in February 2002. Zvonar's recent work includes
pieces for multichannel surround sound (the 8-channel tape piece
"Frikkit!") as well as solo performances using digital looping and signal
processing (recent participation in the Y2K2 Loopfest and Woodstockhausen
Festival). He was also in a "woodshedding" phase of learning new software
and re-learning the guitar, with the vague notion of melding all his past
musical lives into some Frankensteinian new genre.
Some of his more recent works and writings included his "History of
Spatial Music" and "An Extremely Brief History of Spatial Music in the
20th Century", his famous L.A. "Technology Salons", and I couldn't help
but notice Tower Records still sporting his "State of the Bass"
compilation album with the likes of James Sellars, Orlando Jacinto Garcia,
Amy Knoles, Paul Dresher, Robert Black and the great John Cage on "snare
drum".
Dr. Richard Zvonar, aka "RZ", will always have a place in our hearts, for
his insights, his genius, his humor, and in these final years, his
compassion. He was one of those unsung heroes you never hear about, but
are unknowingly influenced by everyday.
We will miss him...
/E. "Doc" Smith is a musician and recording engineer who has worked with
the likes of Brian Eno, Madonna, Warren Zevon, Mickey Hart, Jimmy Cliff,
and John Mayall among others. He is also the inventor of the musical
instrument, the Drummstick. He can be reached at drummstick@earthlink.net/