When people ask ZW Buckley ’17, M.S. ’19, known as Zach in his days at Illinois State University, what he does for work, the answer could take a while. That’s because he’s a composer, music producer, artist, and teacher. He’s good at all these things, but to save time, he pares the list down.
“There have been many permutations, but I say I’m a composer and music producer,” Buckley said.
A two-time graduate of the School of Creative Technologies, Buckley, 31, lives in Seattle with his wife, Emma Crockett ’16, an alum of Illinois State’s College of Business.
Recently he embarked on an endeavor that at first might seem unexpected. An opera that Buckley composed with librettist Spencer Young called Let’s Blow Up a Gas Station! has been chosen for performance by the Seattle Opera. It came out of the opera company’s Jane Lang Davis Creation Lab, launched in 2020, to present new operas by local composers and librettists that tell diverse stories.
Buckley was inspired after attending last year’s performances created by participants like him. He knew the folks at Seattle Opera were taking applications again this year.
“I was so moved by the works I’d seen last year, and it changed so many preconceived notions I had about opera that I thought: ‘I want to be sitting here next year, and I want people to hear my music,’” he said. “I was very confident they would say thanks but no thanks.”
He was wrong. There will be two performances of Let’s Blow Up a Gas Station! on June 21 and 23. Buckley is about to experience his first opening night as a composer.
“I’m mostly excited at this point but really feeling all of the above,” he said. “This is my first time working with professional orchestra musicians, and they’re so capable. When we had our first read, I was so scared, but by the time we reached the end, it was as if they had been playing the music for years. I went from being terrified to being thrilled. It was such a powerful experience.”
“I want composing opera to be a major part of what I do from here on out.”
ZW Buckley
Buckley and Young have been working on the opera for the better part of the last year. To finally hear their work—which had only been living in their heads—with real voices, real musicians, and real instruments for the first time was something pretty special.
“It reminds me of reading about how the time between the Wright Brothers’ first flight and the moon landing was over 60 years, so this feels like that,” Buckley said. “It’s really exciting. Opening night will be like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.”
A native of Ogelsby, an hour north of Normal, Buckley said that he actually had dreams of singing opera when he was in high school.
“My intro to music was through classical chorale singing, so it all started for me as a singer because chorale music was what was available to me in my small hometown,” he said. “I wanted to see if could climb to the top of the mountain in opera.”
But during his senior year of high school, he was discouraged by a teacher he was close with who said he likely wouldn’t be successful.
“What I learned from that was that I don’t have to be confident as long as I’m stubborn,” he said. “So, returning to opera is kind of a reclamation for me. It might seem like an unusual move, but it has roots for me.
“I’ve since forgiven that teacher, but as a teacher now myself, I won’t being doing that to my students; it’s unnecessary.”
Passionate about music education, Buckley teaches private music production lessons over Zoom, and he teaches a class called Creative Audio for Point Blank Music School.
While a lot of his work has been in video games, he recently composed the music for a joint project between Mattel and Peeka: Barbie: You Can Be a Fashion Designer VR. Based on a children’s picture book, it marked Barbie’s debut in virtual reality.
“It was fun getting to write Barbie music,” Buckley said.
Let’s Blow Up a Gas Station! as a title makes this new opera unique from the start. It was an idea that came from Buckley and Young trying to decide what kind of story they wanted to tell.
“Operas are huge epics with grand, world-shattering stories, and we wanted to try something really different,” Buckley said. “Ours is about small people trapped in the middle of larger-than-life events. These are three young climate activists who, despite their best efforts, their community is not listening to them. So, they settle on the radical act of blowing up a local truck stop.
“Because it’s opera, the story has to be dramatic, so we wanted to explore the question: What would it take to push any one of these activists to do something radical to be heard? The whole story takes place during their 20-minute car ride to the truck stop.”
Young is from rural Nebraska, and Buckley said they both recall their small-town connections to the interstate system. He described their opera as serious and something of a thriller that has its share of surreal moments. It’s also filled with Americana and jazz.
Buckley remains appreciative of the Creation Lab program for supporting new artists with workshops and mentorships with composers and librettists who are much further along in their careers.
The experience has been profound.
“I want composing opera to be a major part of what I do from here on out,” Buckley said.
