Dr. Kopplin's Web Site

DAVE KOPPLIN's professional career in music began as extra percussionist for the Colorado Springs Symphony, and later as percussionist for the Colorado Springs Symphony Jazz Quartet. He has performed and recorded with San Francisco's Clubfoot Orchestra, the Brazilian jazz group Araça Azul, and the Leisure Time Orchestra, among many others. In 1983, Kopplin was chosen as a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellow, and in 1984 and again in 1985 was chosen for the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Study Fellowship. He presently sings and plays drums with the Off-Scales, a quartet that performs classic soul, rock, and pop music throughout Southern California.

Kopplin holds a Master's in Music from the University of Southern California where he studied composition with Bob Linn, Morten Lauridsen, Donald Crockett, and jazz composition with Vince Mendoza. He received the Ph.D. in composition at UCLA, where he studied composition with Roger Bourland, Daniel Lentz, Manuel Enriquez, and Ian Krouse, and musicology and ethnomusicology with Robert Walser and Susan McClary. Professional credits as a composer include film scores, incidental music for theater, works for chorus, chamber orchestra, full orchestra, various electro-acoustic works for chamber ensembles, songs, and works for jazz and Latin-jazz ensembles.

Dave Kopplin is active as a writer and speaker. He has lectured on music for the Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles Philharmonic and Pacific Symphony Orchestra, as well as guest lectured at the University of Arizona, Loyola Marymount University, USC, UCLA, Pasadena City College, El Camino College, Whittier College, the University of Calif.-Riverside, and Occidental College. He is currently President of the College Music Society's Pacific Southern Chapter. Kopplin presently is Assistant Professor of Music in music at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He regularly contributes articles, program notes and features for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Opera, UCLA, the Phillip's Performing Arts Center, Washington (D.C.) Performing Arts Society and for the Hollywood Bowl, and served as editor of the summer Hollywood Bowl program guide from 1998-2001.