David Reznick

I was born in Los Angeles in 1939. I studied composition at UCLA with John Vincent, the man who succeeded Schoenberg as Professor of Composition there. There was some other stuff that happened in between those two events, but they were of little importance, and they were none of your business. I did graduate work at San Francisco State University and Oberlin College. Throughout my middle school and high school years I was primarily interested in instrumental music, and I played the French horn. However, in 1955 my high school band was invited to march in the Rose Parade; and after marching five miles with my horn, behind a team of well-nourished horses, I suddenly became interested in choral music, which I’ve been composing ever since.

After leaving academia, I was offered two positions: as an assistant to the assistant manager of a Burger King in Cucamonga; and as a vocal-general music teacher in a high school in Sunnymead, CA. Unfortunately, I made the wrong choice, and so many years of teaching lay ahead of me. At one point I moved to the San Francisco area, but it turned out that trying to teach music to adolescents was the same all over. Eventually I gave up and left teaching; I supported myself from then on by sitting in cubicles in various corporate offices, pushing paper around. I was ecstatic: I finally had time for composition.

I was Choral Director at the March Air Force Base Protestant Chapel in Sunnymead, Island United Church in Foster City, CA; and First Universalist Church in Denver, CO. While in Denver I formed and conducted a chamber group specializing in English madrigals. As a tenor I sang with the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, the Oakland Symphony Chorus, the Roger Wagner Chorale, and the Cantata Choir of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music; and I worked extensively as a tenor soloist. In 1962, along with fellow music students Ted Rusoff and Larry Pack, I formed a trio known as The Catch Club, singing bawdy songs from the English Restoration era. The group toured the U.S. and Canada that year and made an album for Capitol Records.

My most recent publication is an Ave Maria for treble voices, available from Lorenz (15/2051R). I currently reside in Lynnwood, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. If you’d like to hear some of my music, go to choralmusic.biz. If you wouldn’t like to hear some of my music, don’t expect a Christmas card from me.