Ilana Zaks returns to the Art Center! Tuesday July 21 at 4pm on our back porch (weather permitting) or in our gallery.
Pay what you will – Suggested Donation $15
Treat your house guests to this wonderful concert!
Spend the afternoon enjoying this live performance.
Program Description: This recital explores the rich and diverse repertoire of violinist-composers, featuring works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Partita 3, Lauren Bernofsky, Chen Yi, Zwilich, Wieniawski, and Fritz Kreisler. The program highlights the unique voices of these composers, from Baroque masterworks to contemporary expressions, showcasing the violin’s versatility and expressive range.
About Violinst Ilana Zaks-Nederlander
American violinist Ilana Zaks-Nederlander has been praised as “fearless, refreshing, and commanding” (Boston Music Intelligencer) and “captivating and delightful” (Worcester Telegram). A dynamic soloist, educator, and interdisciplinary collaborator, she has appeared with the Pittsburgh Symphony under John Williams and Manfred Honeck, and in concert with Anne-Sophie Mutter. She has soloed with more than a dozen orchestras, including the Boston Civic Symphony, Rhode Island Philharmonic, and Cascade Symphony, and has performed at major venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw, and the Berliner Philharmonie.
She most recently served as a first violinist with the Seattle Symphony and Seattle Opera, a position she won at the age of 22, where she was a frequent performer in the Symphony’s Chamber Music Series at Nordstrom Recital Hall and at the multimedia performance space Octave 9. She has served on the chamber music faculty of the Seattle Conservatory of Music and Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras. In Summer 2025, she joined the violin faculty of the Boston University Tanglewood Institute and the Rollins College Department of Music. Now based in Central Florida, she coaches the Florida Symphony Youth Orchestras and performs regularly with the Atlanta Symphony, Sarasota Orchestra and Opera, and the Orlando Philharmonic and Bach Festival Orchestra in Winter Park.
As a scholar-performer, Ilana has presented her lecture-recital Violinists Who Composed: Notes from the Player’s Pen at more than a dozen universities, including Northwestern University, Brandeis University, Duke University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and the University of Washington. During the 2025–2026 season, her engagements include performances at the Coudert Institute, Norton Museum of Art, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Polasek Museum and Sculpture Gardens, the Morse Museum, Historic Casa Feliz, Sarasota Music Archive, and the Boris Lurie Art Foundation (Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University, Hunter College, North Carolina Museum of Art, Maltz Museum, and the Houston Holocaust Museum). She also appears as a soloist with the Sarasota Chamber Orchestra (March 2026) and the Space Coast Symphony, premiering a new concerto by Chris Marshall, written and commissioned for her. (2027).
Since 2020, Ilana has curated and performed Sound Worlds, a multimedia concert experience for violin and electronics exploring identity, illness, memory, and resilience. Developed during her fellowship at the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media and supported by major national and international grants, the project features immersive works by contemporary composers and incorporates live visuals and post-concert dialogue.
Ilana holds degrees from the New England Conservatory and Yale School of Music, where she studied with Donald Weilerstein and Ani Kavafian, and she trained extensively with Itzhak Perlman at the Perlman Music Program. Her debut recording, The Persistence of Memory (2020), released as a visual album on Amazon Prime, was among the first of its kind in classical music and reflects her longstanding commitment to interdisciplinary creation.
Her honors include the Central Florida United Arts Individual Artist Award (2025), top prize at the Fontainebleau-Ravel Competition, Department of Arts and Culture Bellevue, Auburn, Kent and Seattle (WA), the Yale Broadus Earle Prize, the Yale Women Faculty Forum Award, first prize winner of BMOP Concerto Competitions, and the Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture Opportunity Fund Award. She maintains a concerto repertoire of more than twenty works, including rarely performed pieces such as David Baker’s Concerto for Violin and Jazz Orchestra and Kati Agócs’ Concerto for Violin and Percussion Ensemble.
