Mark Zaki is a composer and violinist whose work occupies the space between genres, largely because he refuses to stay in one. His output ranges from historically informed string quartets to electroacoustic performances involving live video, and interactive electronics. Whether composing for traditional ensembles, scoring films, or constructing immersive media environments, he leans towards blurring lines that other people were perfectly content to leave alone.

He’s fascinated by the intersection of sound, image, and technology, creating spaces that consider identity, perception, and the digital age’s influence on how we experience ourselves and each other. His musical aesthetic draws from minimalism, abstraction, contemporary classical idioms, and electroacoustic traditions, with narrative and dramatic elements appearing when the situation seems to require them.

Zaki’s work has been recognized by the International Society of Contemporary Music and Musica Nova (Prague), and supported by a Mellon Fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and a Fulbright Scholar award to the UK, where he taught and performed at the University of Sheffield.

His music has appeared at festivals and venues including the NY Philharmonic Biennial, National Sawdust, New Adventures in Sound Art (Toronto), the Visual Music Marathon, SEAMUS, the Seoul International Computer Music Festival, Primavera en La Habana, Nuit Bleue (France), and the New Music Miami ISCM Festival. Recordings are available on Composers Concordance Records, New Focus Recordings, SEAMUS Records, CEC Records, KSpace, and his own ZAKI Intermedia label.

As a composer and sound designer, he has contributed to more than 50 film, television, and theater projects. Highlights include the score for Missing Kenley (Terra Incognita Films), The Eyes of Van Gogh, which was featured by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in a year long celebration of the 125th anniversary of van Gogh’s death, and the Peabody Award nominated PBS documentary The Political Dr. Seuss. 

Zaki is Professor of Music at Rutgers University - Camden, where he has taught since 2008. His scholarly and creative work has received several notable university research fellowships, though he continues to face the ongoing challenge of explaining what he does to civilians in fewer than three sentences.

He divides his time between Princeton, NJ, and New York City, and is reasonably sure he left his favorite rosin in one of them.