Jack Van Zandt is a Los Angeles composer of music for concerts, public spaces, gallery installations, television, film, and advertising. He studied composition with Alexander Goehr, Peter Maxwell Davies, Thea Musgrave, Peter Racine Fricker, and Emma Lou Diemer. His concert music has been performed in the USA, Canada, and Europe, and his commercial music composed in partnership with Joel Wachbrit is regularly heard on broadcast and cable TV. He has scored documentary and silent films, and his electronic music has been used for installations, multimedia presentations, and meditation videos and workshops. He is also a writer, teacher, music education program designer, concert producer, and frequent university guest lecturer on various musical subjects. He was Visiting Artist at Cal Arts in 2017. He has recently received commissions from the Copland House Foundation, Grammy-nominated pianist Nadia Shpachenko, the Cal Poly Pomona Piano Ensemble, cellist Maksim Velichkin, Celliola, LA Harptette, bass-baritone Nicholas Isherwood, and soprano Stacey Fraser, who will premiere his new music theater work with a libretto by Jill Freeman, “The New Frontier,” in 2020. His “Sí an Bhrú” for piano and electronics composed for Nadia Shpachenko will appear on her “Poetry of Places” CD (recorded at Skywalker Ranch) to be released in February 2019. His song cycle “Apples and Time Crack in October,” with poems by Jill Freeman, has been recorded by soprano Kirsten Ashley Wiest and pianist Siu Hei Lee for their CD “Luminous,” also to be released in 2019. Jack is a member of the board of directors of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Composers Forum, of which he was president 2014-17.
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