Zuill Bailey

Cellist Zuill Bailey ranks among the leading American practitioners of his instrument, with concerto engagements, solo recitals, and chamber programs that have taken him across the Western hemisphere. His recorded work appears on the Steinway & Sons imprint and on additional labels.

Born James Zuill Bailey in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1972, he grew up in northern Virginia as the son of a music-education scholar and a pianist mother. Early Suzuki training on the cello gave him entry to the capital’s concert life and, through the National Symphony Orchestra fellowship program under Mstislav Rostropovich, to private study with Lynn Harrell and Janos Starker. He completed undergraduate studies at Baltimore’s Peabody Institute and earned a master’s degree at the Juilliard School under Joel Krosnick of the Juilliard String Quartet. His New York recital debut, presented with pianist Simone Dinnerstein at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sold out, and the same partnership appeared on his self-titled 2003 debut album for Delos.

Subsequent seasons have brought appearances at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and Walt Disney Concert Hall, along with concerto performances alongside major orchestras in the United States, Mexico, Japan, and Cuba—the last of which introduced Victor Herbert’s Cello Concerto No. 2 to that country via the National Orchestra of Cuba. A committed chamber musician, Bailey belongs to a piano trio with Navah Perlman and Giora Schmidt and regularly shares recital programs with pianists Awadagin Pratt and Orion Weiss.

His discography, unusually extensive for an American cellist, encompasses releases on Delos, Telarc, and, beginning with the 2014 album Some Other Time, Steinway & Sons. For the latter label he recorded Schumann’s Cello Concerto and Brahms’s Double Concerto, the latter with violinist Philippe Quint, in 2019; two years later he joined the North Carolina Symphony for William Walton’s Cello Concerto. In 2022 he returned to Delos to document Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Cello Concerto with the Santa Rosa Symphony. Bailey serves as professor of cello at the University of Texas at El Paso.