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David Slusser

David Slusser was born in Akron, Ohio in 1952. He began playing tenor saxophone at age 10, around the same time he started experimenting with reel to reel tape recorders. Getting his first film sound job in 1975, he continued his career with a move to the San Francisco Bay area in 1977, where he joined Lucasfilm in 1984, and received an Emmy award for sound editing in 1993. He has worked often as a music editor for directors Francis Coppola, George Lucas and David Lynch, with whom he has co-composed music for his films. On his own he has composed for documentaries and public radio, as well as his jazz group Rubber City. His sound design is in the collections of both the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Contempory Art in Los Angeles, though far more people have heard it in some of the more imaginative commercials on television. He began an association with John Zorn in the mid eighties. Received two prizes in the 1999 Julius Hemphill Composition Awards, including first for jazz orchestra. He also has worked for Pixar since 1996.

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162
Album Review

David Slusser: Rubber City

Read "Rubber City" reviewed by Mark Corroto


Ohio expatriates David Slusser and Ralph Carney pay tribute to their rust belt beginnings on the Akron-inspired Rubber City. Slusser recorded these live quartet performances in the San Francisco Bay Area, with guests dropping in to add flavorful touches. Slusser, Carney, and drummer Chris Ackerman all barely escaped Ohio without gross disfigurements from industrial accidents to make music on the West Coast. Rounding out Slusser’s quartet is bassist Bill Fairbanks, who is not from Ohio, but once received a death-threat ...

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276

TV / Film

Jazz Animation

Jazz Animation

Source: All About Jazz

Early Pixar

I caught a presentation by Pixar director Gary Rydstrom at the Chicago Film Festival. Rydstrom was giving the first public screening of his new short Lifted, and he opened the show with 4 early Pixar shorts: Luxo Jr., Red's Dream, Knick Knack and Tin Toy (all of which were sound designed by Rydstrom). These films were all new to me, and I was surprised to discover that the first two films, Luxo Jr. and Red's Dream, feature jazz ...

Concerts

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Trouble in Tiretown

Jazz Excursion Records
2007

buy

Rubber City

Breath Ears
2002

buy

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