About Nicholas Tzavaras
A native of East Harlem in New York City, cellist Nicholas Tzavaras has toured the globe as a chamber musician, soloist and educator for over two decades. He has performed well over 1,600 concerts worldwide, from Carnegie Hall in New York to the Tonhalle in Zurich to Casals Hall in Tokyo. Since 2000, Mr. Tzavaras has been the cellist of the internationally renowned Shanghai Quartet. Notable festival appearances have included the Brevard, La Jolla and Taos festivals; the Casals Festival in Prades, France; the Melbourne Music Festival in Australia and the Marlboro Festival. For the past 12 years, Mr. Tzavaras has held the esteemed title of guest principal cellist of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra since 2009. He has recorded more than 25 albums for the Naxos, Delos, BIS, Centaur, Camerata, and New Albion labels, including the complete quartet cycle of Beethoven and Bright Sheng’s songs for pipa and cello with Wu Man, to name a few.
Tzavaras began the violin at age 2 with his mother, the celebrated pedagogue Roberta Guaspari, and moved to the cello when he was 8. A graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, he went on to receive degrees from the New England Conservatory and the State University of New York at Stony Brook where his cello teachers were Laurence Lesser and Timothy Eddy. Mr. Tzavaras can be seen in the Academy Award nominated documentary “Small Wonders,” the motion picture “Music of the Heart” and with the Shanghai Quartet in Woody Allen’s “Melinda Melinda.” Since 2002 Mr. Tzavaras has been an Artist-in-Residence at Montclair State University’s John J. Cali School of Music. He is also a guest professor at the Shanghai and Central Conservatories of China and on the faculty of the Longy School of Music in Boston. In the fall of 2020, Tzavaras joined The Tianjin Juilliard School as resident faculty for cello and chamber music.
When not with his cello, Mr. Tzavaras considers himself to be an avid cyclist, occasional triathlete, backyard chicken farmer, enthusiastic but unfortunately average chess player, and, perhaps most importantly, loving father of three children all under the age of 13.