Zachary Mowitz

A native of Princeton, NJ, cellist Zachary Mowitz made his solo debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra in July 2018 as winner of the Greenfield Competition. An artist who wears many hats, Zachary is Artistic Director of ensemble132 and Nodality Music, and associated artist at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel, and co-founded Trio St. Bernard – the 2018 Gold Prize winner of the Chesapeake Chamber Music Competition. He has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony, and has played as Guest Principal Cello with the Colorado Music Festival Orchestra and Princeton Symphony Orchestra. In the summers of 2022 and 2023, he appeared at the Marlboro Music Festival and in Fall of 2024, he will join the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Zachary graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music in 2018, where he studied with Carter Brey and Peter Wiley and served as principal cello of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra. He subsequently studied at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel with Gary Hoffman in Belgium, and at the Royal College of Music with Richard Lester. 

Having played with artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Joseph Lin, Tara Helen O’Connor, Hsin-Yun Huang, and Robert McDonald, Zachary has an intense passion for chamber music. In 2019 he co-founded ensemble132, a chamber music collective that presents innovative programs of their own exciting, original transcriptions of classical masterworks, paired with staples of the traditional chamber music repertoire. Zachary has appeared throughout the United States, visiting halls such as the Kimmel Center’s Verizon Hall and Perelman Hall, Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium, Alice Tully Hall, Columbia University’s Miller Theater, and Johns Hopkins’ Shriver Hall. He has also toured extensively in Europe playing in venues such as the Salzburg Mozarteum, both halls of the Berlin Konzerthaus, Krzysztof Penderecki European Center for Music, Vienna Konzerthaus, Helsinki Music Centre, and London’s Cadogan Hall.

As a young musician he performed as soloist with orchestras throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He also appeared on Heifetz on Tour and the radio show From the Top, and has had performances broadcast by PBS and Philadelphia’s WHYY. In 2017, he was the subject of a feature story in the Philadelphia Inquirer. 

Invested in expanding the impact of classical music, Zachary has dedicated considerable time and energy to a community engagement programs, including: organizing a benefit concert for immigrant families in partnership with ACLU and the Shut Down Berks Campaign, featuring musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra, Daedalus Quartet, and Curtis Institute; performing for Music For Food; extensive touring to schools throughout New Mexico with Music From Angel Fire; an education residency at St. Andrew’s School in Middletown, DE; and song-writing workshops at Philadelphia's Project HOME. In 2022-23, he was a Community Artist Fellow at the Curtis Institute, where he led a climate justice education program in the Philadelphia school district and served people living with dementia in partnership with Penn Memory.

A fervent advocate for new music and innovative programming, Zachary has premiered an array of new works by prominent and young composers alike, including the world premiere of Richard Danielpour’s string quintet Shattered Vessel at Music from Angel Fire in 2019. He has presented two newly commissioned works for solo cello by Nick DiBerardino and Zachary’s own father, Ira Mowitz, in a series of interactive lecture-recitals named Suite Talk. Nick and Zach have since captured the best of this program in a video series with Guarneri Hall and launched the nonprofit Nodality Music, a nonprofit that cultivates direct links between artists, audiences, and broader culture with narrative-driven musical experiences.

Zachary was awarded First Prize in the 2020 World Bach Competition and is the cellist of Philadelphia’s Gamut Bach Ensemble. He is based in New York and co-teaches a class on social entrepreneurship and climate justice at the Curtis Institute. In his spare time, Zachary enjoys exploring the endless world of podcasts and tossing a frisbee.