Composer Pianist Teacher Conductor Organist
Here’s an overview of what I do:
Composer - I write music for the concert stage, church, living rooms…
Pianist - I play piano primarily for opera singers and choirs. Singers and music directors call me because of my sight-reading skill and reliable musicianship. I also play jazz with my trio.
Organist - I am the organist for a very fine church music program at St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Los Angeles. You can find me at the organ every Sunday, and on every 3rd Saturday for Evensong.
Educator - I teach music theory and musicianship at Moreno Valley College, a thriving campus in the California Community College system, and Music Technology at Mt. St. Mary’s University in Los Angeles.
Bio/CV
Zach Neufeld is a composer of a diverse range of work, including choral, orchestral, chamber, and electronic music. He is equally active as a pianist, organist, teacher, and conductor, and is in demand as a collaborative pianist for singers. Recent performances include selections from Winterreise with tenor Thomas Segen for the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Inside the Music series at Disney Hall, the piano-four-hands arrangement of Barber of Seville with Pacific Opera Project, and masterclasses with Susan Graham, John Bucchino, and Speranza Scappucci. Zach’s recent work, Let All Things Know Peace for a cappella choir, was premiered by the LA chamber choir Inspiravi as part of their emerging composers series. Zach was also a featured composer at the 2015 Cal State LA choral composers workshop. Other recent performances include Variations on a theme of Beethoven for solo piano, written for the DMA recital of Hojoon Kim, and Passacaglia for horn and piano, commissioned by Olivier Huebscher for his DMA recital at Indiana University.
He has a particular affinity for music for the voice. Two recently completed projects include a setting of the Anglican Preces and Responses for the Redlands, CA based Ensemble XXI, and an arrangement of Fleetwood Mac's Landslide for the choirs at Northern Michigan University.
Click here for my CV/Works List
Zach teaches music theory at Moreno Valley College, Music Technology at Mt. St. Mary’s University, and has taught musicianship, theory, keyboard skills, and teaching techniques at UCLA. He has a specific interest in teaching music from a diverse stylistic perspective, and in 2014 assisted in the design of a pilot course at UCLA, the aim of which was viewing music theory through the lenses of jazz, Western Art Music, pop, rock, and world cultures.
Zach is Cathedral Organist at St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral in downtown Los Angeles, where he provides music for parish and diocesan services, and accompanies the Cathedral Choir. He is also a pianist for the opera department at UCLA and the choral and musical theater program at the Windward School.
He is equally at home in a jazz setting as in an opera masterclass or church service, and regularly plays with jazz and pop combos in the Southern California area, including the Zach Neufeld Trio. He is active as a bass chorister, and has performed with the professional groups Redlands Choral Artists and Inspiravi, and others such as the UCLA Early Music Ensemble and Ensemble XXI. In 2016, he made his stage debut in the chorus for UCLA Opera's production of Massenet's Cendrillon.
Zach earned a Ph.D and M.A. in Music Composition from UCLA, and a B.M. from the University of Redlands.
Upcoming projects include a collection of organ voluntaries and a song cycle for soprano and piano.
Listen
CHORAL
Let All Things Know Peace was written for the LA Chamber Choir Inspiravi and their director Jean-Sebastién Vallée. It was premiered on their 2015 season at Pasadena City College and Mount St. Mary's University. It was also a featured composition at the 2015 Cal State LA Choral Composers Workshop. The poem is by the composer's sister, Emily Neufeld.
chamber
Pavane was written for the UCLA residency of the Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble. It is part of a larger work entitled Interludes and Dances.
These Measureless Mountain Days for trombone and piano. Recorded May 2012, UCLA Graduate Composers Concert. Joey Muñoz, trombone; Zach Neufeld, piano.
June 23, 1911; In camp on the North Fork of the Merced -- " Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest. Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God. Never more, however weary, should one faint by the way who gains the blessings of one mountain day; whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever. -- John Muir, from My First Summer in the Sierra
Ever since my childhood vacations to Yosemite and the Sierra Nevadas, I have loved being in the mountains. I have vivid memories of driving up highway 395 to Bishop, CA, flanked by the southernmost end of the Sierras on the left and the pristine White Mountains on the right, and being perfectly content to gaze in awe out the window for hours on end at the still, stark peaks jutting into the sky as the foreground whizzed by in a blur. When I began work on this piece in the Fall quarter of 2011, I had recently come across my grandfatherʼs original signed copy of Ansel Adamsʼ The Sierras, full of prints Adams himself made of his unparalleled landscape photographs. Further study of Adamsʼ work naturally led me to the writings of John Muir, which perfectly encapsulate the visual and emotional effect of Adamsʼ photographs into words. It was in Muir that I found not only a title, but an eloquent description of my feelings toward the mountains, and, with Adams, inspiration for the mood and sound-world of the piece.
My setting of James Stephens' Mary Hynes, from his collection of translations and re-imaginings of Irish poetry entitled "Reincarnations."
orchestra
the ocean swallows the sun was written for a reading session of UCLA graduate composers with the UCLA Philharmonia. Britten fans will notice some nods to Peter Grimes, the influence of which I cannot escape when writing music about the ocean. I think of it as Britten with a California sunset sensibility.
Overture for a Summer Evening was written for the HASOM Chamber Orchestra at UCLA as part of Paul Chihara's student recordings project. It's idiom and mood are inspired by the carefree atmosphere of a summer pops concert.
solo
Variations on a theme of Beethoven were written for Hojoon Kim as part of the UCLA New Music Forum. The 5 highly contrasting variations never explicitly state the theme; however, there are a couple moments where it almost comes into focus. Each is an homage to a different composer.
Cat Sketches - for a young pianist (2013)
1. Andy explores outdoors in the sun
2. Boo stalks the dog
3. Old Max sleeps and purrs
Cat Sketches is a set of miniatures for an intermediate level piano student. I wrote them at the request of a former professor of mine who is designing a class piano curriculum and wanted to include new pieces by colleagues and former students. Each movement is about one of my cats.
electronic
Sunset Over Hume Lake is an electroacoustic composition using processed audio. All of the audio samples are from either recordings I made of the Schlicker organ at First Presbyterian Church of Redlands, or short clips of my acoustic compositions.
"Wake Up!" is a recomposition and deconstruction of a Bach chorale (Wachet Auf, from Cantata #140). Almost all of the pitches are taken in order from the chorale. By deleting pitches while leaving the structure mostly intact, the chorale itself is cast in a new light (and cast in shadows as well). As the piece progresses, more of the original Bach appears, and thus the chorale is revealed gradually, as if emerging from a shroud of fog. The majority of instruments and timbres used also serve to obscure the Baroque origin of the music, removing it from its own time, yet retaining reverent spirituality of the original.
Updates
Contact
Send me an email at zachneufeld@gmail.com
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