With a broad career as a cellist, performer, teacher and administrator, Aron Zelkowicz has cultivated a repertoire both classical and ethnic, familiar and obscure. He serves as the Founder and Director of the Pittsburgh Jewish Music Festival, which presents rare and diverse works from Jewish musical traditions. Under his guidance, the Festival has featured renowned ensembles and guest artists from the orchestral, chamber, early music, rock, and world music genres in innovative and thematic programs, for which he oversees every aspect of fundraising, marketing, production, and artistic direction. Critics noted his “impressive” directorial debut of an original, fully staged production of the chamber opera “The Dybbuk: Between Two Worlds” by Ofer Ben-Amots, and dubbed the Festival “one of the highest quality concert series in town” (Pittsburgh Tribune- Review) and a local “best-kept secret” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). In its fourteen seasons, the Festival has programmed over 150 pieces of classical chamber and orchestral music inspired by Jewish traditions, including several world premieres and commissions.
Dr. Zelkowicz serves as the producer for the Festival’s ongoing CD series, "Russian Jewish Classics”, which also features his talents as a cellist. These recordings (dubbed "first-rate" by Fanfare Magazine) represent a multi-year project devoted to the St. Petersburg Society for Jewish Folk Music and its affiliated Russian composers. The first five volumes have been released by the independent British label Toccata Classics, with future albums projected in a series that will shed new light upon these masters of Jewish art-music.
As a cellist, Aron Zelkowicz has performed at the Tanglewood, Banff, Aspen, Sarasota, Chautauqua, Colorado, Cactus Pear and Sunflower festivals, with members of the Emerson and Cleveland Quartets, as Principal Cello of the Miami Symphony Orchestra, with the Toronto Symphony and National Arts Centre Orchestra of Canada, and on international tours with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. From 1999-2002 he was a member of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. He is currently based in the Boston and performs through the New England region as a member of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston Lyric Opera Orchestra, the ProArte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP), as Associate Principal Cello of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, and as Principal Cello of the Boston Landmarks Orchestra.
As a teacher and coach to young string players, Dr. Zelkowicz gives master classes at universities throughout the USA, including state universities of Alaska, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin. He has served on the faculties of Point Counterpoint Chamber Music Camp, the Brevard Music Center and the North Carolina Governor’s School. In 2013 he completed an eight-city tour of the mid-west United States, playing the complete cello suites of Benjamin Britten to mark the composer’s centenary. Other solo and chamber music appearances include the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Chameleon Arts Ensemble in Boston, Killington Music Festival in Vermont, Trinity Church Wall St., Pittsburgh Concert Society, NEMPAC’s (North End Music and Performing Arts Center’s) Winter Concert Series, and Keene State College. In recent seasons he has appeared as soloist in cello concerti by Dvorak, Elgar, and Saint-Saens with orchestras that include the Connecticut Valley Symphony, Arlington Philharmonic, and Edgewood Symphony Orchestras.
A native of Ottawa, Canada, Aron Zelkowicz grew up in Pittsburgh and received degrees from the Eastman School of Music, Indiana University and Stony Brook University, where his teachers included Paul Katz, Steven Doane, Janos Starker and Colin Carr.