Carnival of Soul

Tuesday, October 1, 2019 | 6:01 AM

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Zac Zinger was born into the world of jazz.

Growing up in the Sewickley Valley, jazz was always playing inside his family home — either on the radio or from his dad’s collection of 2,000 vinyl albums.

More than a decade after graduating from Quaker Valley High School in 2007, Zinger is releasing his jazz-world fusion debut album, “Fulfillment.” The 12-track album combines all of his best works from the last 10 years, using his experiences from travels to Japan and Taiwan, his background in jazz and his knowledge and skills on the shakuhachi — a bamboo flute used in Japan and China.

“It’s just a presentation of the music that I most believe in,” said Zinger, 30, who now lives in New York.

“Fulfillment” can be found starting on Oct. 3 on all of the popular streaming services including Amazon, Apple Music, iTunes and Spotify. Copies also are available for purchase online through Bandcamp or CD Baby.

Zinger credits his early years for helping shape him into the musician he is today.

With jazz music playing all around him as a child, he said, it was like he already knew the language and just needed a vessel to let it out.

He found that in Chris Burgh’s band and orchestra class at Edgeworth Elementary. He was in fourth grade when he started playing the saxophone.

Burgh noticed pretty quickly that Zinger was going to shine.

“He was always at the top of his game,” she said, adding that he had an appetite for more.

So she recommended he take private lessons.

By sixth grade, Zinger was learning from Pittsburgh jazz legend Eric DeFade and improvising for the first time alongside high school students. He might have played in the wrong key, but when saxophonist Jimmy Heath smiled and nodded to him after his performance, he was hooked.

At Quaker Valley High School, Zinger was goalie for the state championship hockey team in 2006.

Burgh, who retired this summer after 35 years at Quaker Valley, tells the story of Zinger playing the “Star Spangled Banner” on his saxophone while in uniform, then heading right onto the ice for game time.

As a teen, Zinger attended the Pennsylvania Governor’s School for the Arts. It was the first time he was surrounded by students who were as dedicated to music as he was.

It was there he decided he wanted to give music a shot as a career. He recalls returning to school that fall and dropping AP biology in order to focus on music.

“The logic being, if I don’t follow this, I’ll always wonder what if,” he said.

After high school, Zinger attended Berklee College of Music, where he studied jazz composition and film scoring and played on the school’s hockey team. He graduated summa cum laude in 2011.

While in Boston, he landed a gig arranging music for the video game “Monster Hunter.”

Zinger has always loved video game music. It’s similar to film, he said, in that you’re creating drama and suspense.

Burgh recalls when Zinger was her student, he came into the classroom one day, having memorized the theme to “Mario Kart,” the night before. He played it — perfectly — for the class.

“I think it’s a fascinating new frontier for composition and exploration of artistic ideas,” Zinger said of video games.

In 2012, he moved to New York, not knowing what was going to happen there, but needing to try.

He’s continued to write music for video games, including traveling to Budapest where he recorded with a 70-piece orchestra for the video game “Jump Force.”

His compositions have earned him numerous awards.

Shortly after moving to New York, Zinger traveled to Japan and was introduced to the shakuhachi, a primitive 5-holed bamboo flute, which often can be heard in samurai films.

“That changed everything for me,” he said.

The shakuhachi has become more popular in recent years, but not so much in jazz. Zinger wanted to explore that uncharted territory.

He started by playing the major scales and Skyping with an instructor in Japan to learn how to play, before finding a teacher in New York.

In 2016, he received the Asian Cultural Council Artist Fellowship, allowing him to live in Japan for five months in 2017 to study Shakuhachi with three teachers.

In 2018, he was invited to speak and perform at the World Shakuhachi Festival in London.

“Fulfillment” is “a longtime coming,” said Zinger, who plays saxophone for half of the album and the shakuhachi on the other half, with one track played on an electronic wind instrument and another on a dizi, a Chinese flute.

The latter track, named “Taiwan,” is inspired by a three-day trip he took during his fellowship. Another track is about the number three, while another is about writer’s block.

“I feel really comfortable that I have something unique and something to offer,” Zinger said. “I felt like I had to do it.”