Across eight tracks, Mark Zaki crafts a collection that is both sonically adventurous and emotionally resonant. While grounded in contemporary classical traditions, the album seamlessly integrates influences from electronica, computer music, jazz, and historically informed performance practice. The result is a kaleidoscopic soundworld where genres dissolve into one another, creating a listening experience that is at times, as playful and whimsical as it is reflective and poignant.

At the heart of The Turning Frame lies Zaki’s exploration of memory, identity, and commentary on the present moment. The track Hands Full of Air, featuring mezzo Mara Zaki, poignantly portrays the voice of a child navigating the delicate terrain between the desire for acceptance and the fears that guard it.

“With The Turning Frame, I wanted to create an album that lives at the intersection of memory, imagination, and commentary. Each piece traces a line between the intimate and the outward-looking, touching moments of nostalgia, fragility, and wonder, and bound together by an enduring impulse to explore. The music draws on the many traditions I’ve lived with as a performer and composer: contemporary classical, jazz, early music, electronica, and computer music. In weaving them together, my goal was to build a soundworld that feels at once familiar and surprising, rooted and yet untethered.”

~ Mark Zaki

Mezzo-soprano Mara Zaki is a recent Bard College graduate, where she double-majored in Music and Literature, a combination that shaped both her artistry and her approach to storytelling.

She began her vocal training with Ilka LoMonaco and continued with Rufus Müller, picking up an eclectic lineup of operatic roles along the way. At Bard, she took the stage as Dorabella (Così fan tutte), Hänsel (Hänsel und Gretel), Marthe (Faust), Leonora (La Favorita), and the ever-mischievous Mistress Quickly (Falstaff).

Outside of Bard, Mara has performed with the Clarion Society’s Collegium Week, the baroque band La Fiocco, and the Hudson River Consort. Recent highlights include stepping into the heartbreak of Dido (Dido and Aeneas) for the Queens College Baroque Opera Workshop, and appearances with the Bach Academy at Northwestern University as a Young Artist in 2024 and 2025.