The work may feed his soul, but when it comes to putting food on the table, Zabriskie has a very different kind of job.

He writes tunes for slot machines.

"I have the sacred on one side, and the profane on the other," said the Sandy-based composer about his split-personality career.

Zabriskie is the musical force behind large-scale productions by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, such as the Christmas favorite, "The Savior of the World," and the church's newest summer pageant in Nauvoo, Ill. And he writes traditional classical compositions for a number of groups that aren't affiliated with the LDS Church.

But he's also the creative mind behind music that thousands of gamblers hear every day while sliding coins and bills into slot machines around the world.

Considering the LDS Church's outspoken stance on gambling - "don't do it" - it may seem a controversial choice. But Zabriskie remains in good standing with his church.

"Every year I go into my bishop's office to renew my temple recommend" - the paper that vouches for a member's moral and spiritual fitness to enter the church's most sacred buildings. And every year he leaves with paper in hand.

But it wasn't a career he entered into lightly.

Zabriskie earned a bachelor's degree in music composition at the LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University in Provo, and a Ph.D. at Chicago's Northwestern University. While still penning his dissertation, he went looking for a job.

"I wanted to be a university teacher, but without a finished dissertation I wasn't going to get it. There was too much competition," said Zabriskie, a boyish-looking man of 51 who goes to work in his home office in T-shirts, jeans and stocking feet. A portrait of Jesus overlooks his desk.

He stumbled across a job writing music for pinball and video games, and found that he had a knack for it.

"I could do it fast, and I could do it well," he said. "And it's composing. That's what I went to school to learn to do."

For years, the job was reliable and fun. David and Kimberly Zabriskie happily raised their family of five children in Chicago, and the job kept him busy and the family in diapers.

"I flew out to Reno to check out the city and see if it was some place we wanted to live," he said. While there, he sought out local LDS leaders to see if they would have any trouble with his potential job.

"We in Nevada support the gaming industry," the leaders told him, pointing out that many members work as housekeepers, cooks, managers and desk clerks for the casinos and hotels.

In fact, Mormons are often cited as the founders of Las Vegas. In 1855, a group of 30 LDS men established an Indian mission at the Meadows in southern Nevada, a spot that later would become today's most famous sin city.

According to the 2006 Church Almanac, 165,498 Latter-day Saints lived in Nevada as of 2004. Church members in good standing can do many jobs in the industry, but nothing that takes them onto the casino floor, such as being a card dealer or cocktail waitress.

Zabriskie ended up turning down the job, but not for religious reasons.

In 2001, he quit his video-game job and moved his family back to Utah, where he dabbled in orchestration, conducting, launching an online sheet-music service, and writing for musical theater.

Around the same time, church leaders called upon him to write and oversee music for huge projects such as "Savior of the World." Each year, about 26,000 people flock to Temple Square in Salt Lake City to see the story of the birth and resurrection of Jesus. He also was asked to be lead composer on the Nauvoo Pageant, an outdoor musical-theater extravaganza that tells the story of a couple's conversion to Mormonism during the early days of the church. The projects are official church "callings," a kind of command performance that comes without pay. Each one takes hundreds of hours to complete.

In 2003, the gambling industry came calling again. This time, he took the job, telecommuting from his Utah home and flying to Reno for a few days every other week.

Today, he is one of six composers working for International Game Technology, the biggest slot machine maker in the world, according to IGT spokesman Rick Sorensen.

Once he got clearance from his church, taking the job wasn't a tough decision. "I don't gamble, but if other people do, I don't have a problem with it. People need to be responsible for their own decisions."

It wasn't a surprise, either, for a guy as complex as Zabriskie. He is not only a Mormon, but a Democrat, a fan of controversial Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, a passionate potter, and a regular exerciser - a habit he picked up after a heart scare a few years ago.

Kimberly said at first, she thought she was marrying a "quiet music professor." Still, she said, she's never had concerns about the gambling aspect. "It's just a job, and he has so much fun."

His parents are dead, but Zabriskie believes they would be proud of his work. He points to a small black-and-white photograph of his mother, hanging on the family's "wall of fame." She's a petite woman, smiling broadly, standing in front of a slot machine.

"Mom loved to play the slots," he said.

Like the video games, the slot tunes came easily, said Zabriskie. Slot machines have evolved over the decades. Reels have been replaced with video screens and the machines no longer spit out handfuls of coins, but issue a ticket that can be traded for cash. And many now have a "bonus round."

That concept lets players take a break from the slot action and gives them a short, entertaining diversion, like shooting alien spacecraft or playing tic-tac-toe or pinball. Sometimes the bonus round earns them more money. Now the company is churning out such games, each with a fun theme.

Zabriskie has composed tunes for a fishing-themed game called "Reel 'Em In," a pirate game, and "The Creature From the Black Lagoon," among others.

All the themes are wholesome, said Zabriskie.

"You won't find any nudity or murder," he said. "In gambling, they don't mix their vices."

Zabriskie said he enjoys the work because it has so much variety. For the fishing game, he composed a banjo-banging tune that sounds like it comes straight from a porch in the backwoods of West Virginia. He dug out an old theremin, with its distinctive '50s sci-fi sound, for the weird tune on "Creature."

And for the pirates piece, he recruited a bunch of friends. His former bishop wrote the lyrics; another bishop teamed up with two fellow church leaders and "one non-LDS guy" to record lines like: "A pirate is a sinful man, who lives his life by sinful plan," and "It's boom, boom, boom, from our cannons black, and we'll send 'em to hell where they cannot shoot back."

Janna B-Jensen, creative director at IGT, said Zabriskie is a fantastic employee.

"He's a great guy, very talented, very level-headed," she said. "I wish we could have him all the time here in Reno."

Zabriskie is currently taking a break from church-related composing. He'd like to compose for the movies someday, and do more work in musical theater. He's also compiling information for a book he plans to write. Mostly, though, he's focusing on the slot machines.

"It's a blast," he said.

jbarrett@sltrib.com