Bio
Trevor Zavac (he/him, b. 2000 Hinsdale, IL) is a composer, hornist, and wordist whose works experiment with perception and abstraction to explore the complexity, beauty, and humor of the illogical. Zavac’s music has been performed by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, USC Thornton Edge, the Brevard Music Center Orchestra, Brevard New Music Ensemble, and the Butler University Composer’s Orchestra. His music for ballet has been choreographed and performed by the Indianapolis Ballet and the Jacobs School of Music Ballet Department. A 2024 ASCAP Morton Gould Award winner, Zavac’s compositions have received awards from the ARTZenter Institute, the Brevard Music Center, and the International Horn Society. He holds a B.M. in Composition and a B.M. in Horn Performance from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and is currently pursuing a M.M. in Composition at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music.
Long Bio
Trevor Zavac (b. 2000 Hinsdale, IL) is a composer and horn player. A graduate of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he double majored in composition and horn performance, Zavac has studied horn with Dr. Gail Lewis, Richard Seraphinoff, and Thomas Jöstlein; and composition with Michael Schelle, PQ Phan, David Dzubay, Aaron Travers, Donald Crockett, Ted Hearne, and Andrew Norman. He currently attends the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music where he is pursuing a M.M. in Composition.
Zavac’s music has been performed by a myriad of chamber groups and large ensembles at the University of Southern California, the Brevard Music Center, Butler University, and Indiana University; including Thornton Edge, the Butler University Composers Orchestra, and the Brevard Music Center New Music Ensemble, among others. A 2025 ARTZenter emerging composer grant recipient, his music for chamber orchestra has been premiered by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. In both November of 2022 and 2023, his music was choreographed by Eli Diersing and performed by the Indianapolis Ballet for their “New Works” performance series.
In the summers 2021 and 2022, Zavac attended the Brevard Music Center Summer Composition Institute in Brevard, North Carolina where his orchestra piece, Convulsions, was awarded a premiere by the Brevard Music Center Orchestra under the direction of Keith Lockhart. Zavac’s “Fringe” won honorable mention in the 2022 International Horn Society Composition Contest and was exhibited at the International Horn Symposium in Montreal in July of 2023. In 2024, Zavac was awarded an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer’s Award for his piece, The Butterfly. The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players premiered Zavac’s work, “Composition No. 0136”, in 2026 after a completion grant from the ARTZenter Institute. In February of 2026, a version of this piece for full orchestra was premiered by the USC Thornton Symphony.
As an instrumentalist, Zavac has performed with a myriad of ensembles at Butler University, Indiana University, and the University of Southern California. In addition to studying horn, Zavac is a historical performer of fortepiano, on which he presents historically curated concerts as a costumed first and/or third person interpreter at living history museums around the country. As a conductor, Zavac lead the Big Red Horn Club at IU from 2022-2024.
Zavac is also an accomplished writer and poet; he has received recognition at both the state and national level for his humor writing and poetry. His humorous short story, “Letter to My Substitute,” was published in Scholastic’s anthology The Best Teen Writing of 2018. This love for literature inspires Zavac’s musical exploration. In the visual arts, Zavac is a historically informed textile artist using historical weaving methods to reproduce 19th century textiles and to create contemporary works.
By the way, it is pronounced ZAY-VAK.
Just pretend you are saying “the vac” in a bad French accent.
