Zachary Good
A familiarity with the school and a desire to teach music at a state university made NIU the perfect place for new School of Music faculty member Zachary Good.
Good had previously worked with NIU’s recording arts team on some projects in the Recital Hall and Boutell Memorial Concert Hall, which made him immediately receptive to an opportunity to join the school’s faculty.
“It was the perfect location, the perfect place in proximity to my home and to Chicago and it was an opportunity to live out my dream of teaching at a state school,” he said. “I believe that education should be affordable and the tuition at NIU is very reasonable. It has great facilities, I knew the quality of the faculty and I just saw myself being one of them.”
In addition to being a visiting professor of clarinet, Good is also the woodwind area coordinator, which he says he found a little daunting, but it was also a key factor in his decision. “I feel like I’m part of the team here even though I’m the ‘new kid.’ Everyone has been so kind and shown me so much trust. It’s been fun. I wasn’t sure at first about being area coordinator, but I’ve found it really taps into my type-A tendencies. I try to be as organized and responsive as possible.”
Good was fated to be a clarinetist.
“Growing up in Pittsburgh, across the street from us was a clarinet player,” Good said. “He was a very loud clarinetist, and he liked to practice with his windows open in the summers. So I had that sound in my ear since I was a baby. When I got to third grade, I wanted to play the saxophone, and my school wouldn’t let me. They said I had to play the clarinet first. My parents told me I was going to study with Eric from across the street. The rest is history.”
Eric and Zachary must have hit it off.
Good is a multifaceted clarinetist, chamber musician, composer and educator. He is the clarinetist of the sextet Eighth Blackbird, a member of Ensemble Dal Niente and founding co-artistic director and member of the eccentric performance collective Mocrep. He is a frequent guest with Music of the Baroque Chicago, Present Music Milwaukee, International Contemporary Ensemble and the puppet company Manual Cinema. As an improviser, he performs and records with the trio ZRL and the quintet Honestly Same, as well as regularly appearing on improvised music series throughout Chicago. His discography includes releases on Cedille Records, Moon Glyph Records, American Dreams Records, Carrier Records, No Index, Homeroom, Parlour Tapes+, ears&eyes and his own record label Add Dye Editions.
As a composer, Zachary explores contrapuntal possibilities on the soprano clarinet with small–interval multiphonics (“close dyads” or double stops), creating the illusion of multiple clarinetists playing simultaneously.
He earned his B.M. at Oberlin Conservatory of Music and moved to Chicago to earn his master of music at DePaul, and has his D.M.A. from Northwestern.
He also works as instructor of clarinet at Harper College, and a woodwind chamber music coach with the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra. Alongside the musicians of Eighth Blackbird, he was visiting instructor at the University of Richmond. In 2018, he collaborated with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma at the Youth Music Culture Guangdong Festival in Guangzhou, China as a teaching fellow, mentoring young musicians from around the world. Previously, he served as a middle school band director at the Chicago Waldorf School from 2015 to 2021.
