Jude Ziliak

Jude Ziliak is a violinist specialized in historical performance practices. He is a member of Sonnambula, Ensemble in Residence at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2018-2019, and a principal player with the American Bach Soloists. He teaches violin and directs string ensembles at the Special Music School (P.S. 859), New York’s K-12 public school for musically gifted children.

Ziliak’s performances with Sonnambula have been featured on NPR’s Performance Today, and the ensemble recently completed the first recording of the complete works of Leonora Duarte, to be released on Centaur in fall 2018. Their 2018-2019 residency at the Metropolitan Museum will include four concert programs at the Cloisters and feature collaborations with Piffaro: The Renaissance Band, writer and photographer Teju Cole, and lutenist Esteban La Rotta. In previous seasons, the ensemble has performed at the Madison Early Music Festival, Princeton University, Strathmore Mansion, Baruch Performing Arts Center, and the Hispanic Society of America, for whom they have presented annual concerts of music from the Iberian peninsula to standing-room crowds.

With the American Bach Soloists, Ziliak has served as concertmaster for a recording of Bach’s Four Orchestral Suites, to be published in 2018, and was featured as soloist in Vivaldi’s Concerto per la Santissima Assonzione. He has also appeared on the ABS recordings of Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Motets. Ziliak has also performed with The English Concert under the direction of Harry Bicket, Les Arts Florissants under William Christie, and many of North America’s period instrument orchestras, including the Clarion Society, Blue Hill Bach, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, New York Baroque Incorporated, and Musica Angelica. As a chamber musician, he has been a guest of Cantata Profana and the Four Nations Ensemble and has collaborated with Elizabeth Blumenstock, Florence Malgoire, and Jaap Schroder.

Ziliak studied Historical Performance at the Juilliard School as a pupil of Monica Huggett and Cynthia Roberts. While there, he encountered many leading figures in the field of early music, including Richard Egarr, Ton Koopman, Jordi Savall, and Masaaki Suzuki. Studies with Joshua Rifkin and David Schulenberg ground his approach to the study of performance practice.

Trained as a modern violinist at Rice University (Master of Music), Boston University (Bachelor of Music), and the Royal College of Music, London, his principal teachers were Bayla Keyes, Kenneth Goldsmith, and Dona Lee Croft. A former member of Lorin Maazel’s Castleton Festival Orchestra, he has been concertmaster at the National Orchestral Institute under Andrew Litton and led orchestras there as a New Lights Fellow. In 2018 Ziliak received the Jeffrey Thomas Award from the American Bach Soloists, awarded annually to recognize “exceptionally gifted emerging professionals in the field of early music who show extraordinary promise and accomplishment.” Raised in Sewanee, Tennessee, he now makes his home in New York with his wife, violist da gamba Elizabeth Weinfield, and their son, Walter.