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Re: Remembering Composer (and live looper) Dr. Richard Zvonar
Yes, he indeed was (the best) and very much missed.
On May 31, 2013, at 5:17 AM, Douglas Baldwin wrote:
> 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/
>