Dan Marschak is an Oakland-born composer, jazz pianist and educator. He is a founding member of the composers collective LA Signal Lab: “Four young and versatile performer-composer new-music Trekkies who cross genres with the graceful ease of the USS Enterprise traversing galaxies.“ (Mark Swed, LA Times)
Recent highlights include a performance at
LA Phil’s Noon to Midnight in 2017, collaborations with established ensembles
HOCKET and
Aperture Duo, a residency at
Avaloch Farm Music Institute, an upcoming album “
Water and Power”, and a collaborative project
URSA: an interstellar cantata, which premiered in 2019 to critical acclaim at
Tuesdays @ MonkSpace and in 2020 at the
Hot Air Music Festival. His 2013 orchestra work “
Two Rivers” was commissioned by the
American Composers Orchestra, and was workshopped and performed by the La Jolla Symphony under the direction of Steven Schick.
Marschak also maintains an active schedule as a jazz pianist, and has performed with a variety of respected musicians at venues across California. Marschak’s debut album
Likewise was heralded as “adventurous and well developed” by Lalo Schifrin. Steering clear of conventional formats, the album offers “interesting and genre-varied repertoire of largely original music” (
All About Jazz). He is also featured as music director, composer, and pianist on the 2018 album
Time Stops by vocalist
Kalil Wilson.
In 2011, he co-founded Well Versed Productions, a music composition/production company with notable producer and drummer Miles Senzaki. Together, they have scored a variety of multimedia projects, including several short films and three full-length independent feature films.
A committed educator, he is currently full-time faculty at Las Positas College in Livermore, where he teaches composition, music theory, piano, jazz combos, and piano pedagogy. He holds an MA in Composition from UCLA, where his primary teachers were Paul Chihara, James Newton, Ian Krouse, Mark Carlson, Roger Bourland, and David S. Lefkowitz as well as dual BA’s from UCLA in Composition and Ethnomusicology (Jazz Studies). More info at:
