Zap! is the collaboration between the multi-faceted reeds of Randy McKean and the live electro-acoustic manipulations of David Dvorin. Using the framework of improvisation, contemporary jazz and art music, their original pieces contain echoes of such diverse sources as vintage science-fiction, Edison cylinder recordings, hillbilly swing, bird-song, obsolete sounds, and comic books.
Saxophonist/clarinetist/composer Randy McKean leads or co-leads several bands, including the chamber jazz quartet Bristle, the improv trio Pluck Vim Vigour, the avant-folk duo Sawbones, and the acoustic-electronics duos Zap! and The Gargantius Effect. He appears regularly with Beacoup Chapeaux, Ludi Hinrichs’ Chickenbonz, Dan Plonsey’s Daniel Popsicle, and Tony Passarell’s Thin Air Orchestra.
His string quartet “Passages” was premiered by the Del Sol String Quartet in 2009. His CDs include So Dig This Big Crux (Rastascan) and, with the Great Circle Saxophone Quartet, Child King Dictator Fool (New World). McKean studied with Paul Smoker, Anthony Braxton, David Rosenboom, and Maggi Payne.
He has lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City, and he and his family have called Grass Valley home since 2002.
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Emmy-nominated composer, author, and educator, David Dvorin has had his music performed in numerous new music and multimedia festivals around the United States and in Europe, including the Carmel Performing Arts Festival, Big Sur Experimental Music Festival, Music in the Mountains Festival, Wet Ink, Palais Ideal, Sound & Vision Festival, TechArt20xx, SEAMUS, Kansas City Electronic Music Arts and Alliance, 60x60 Project, FirstWorks/Pixilerations, and the SOCOM Festival. His twenty-five minute multimedia piece, As Alice, written for the California E.A.R. Unit, is featured in the ensemble’s current concert touring season.
In addition to producing several CDs and DVDs of his compositional work, David’s artistic and technical skills have also been utilized by others, including such musical luminaries as composer Terry Riley and the Kronos Quartet, for whom he designed and produced the electroacoustic music for the 2002 NASA commissioned piece, Sun Rings, and mixed the electronic music for the 2008 Nonesuch release, Cusp of Magic.
Regarded as an expert on Apple’s Logic Pro software, his textbook, Logic Pro 9: Advanced Music Production, now in its third edition, has been adopted by educational institutions worldwide, and is the basis for Apple Computer’s certified training.
David is currently a professor of music composition and electronic music at California State University, Chico.
