Nick Photinos

Nick Photinos is a four-time Grammy Award-winning cellist and one of the leading voices in contemporary and new music performance. An active advocate for living composers, he has premiered hundreds of works and collaborated closely with many of the most influential composers and artists of his generation. He is Professor of Chamber Music and Eminent Scholar at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and a former founding cellist and co-Artistic Director of the ensemble Eighth Blackbird, with which he performed over 1,000 concerts and commissioned and premiered a wide range of landmark contemporary works.

As a performer, Photinos has appeared as soloist with orchestras including the Cleveland, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Toronto, Utah, and Atlanta Symphonies, and has performed on major stages worldwide including Carnegie Hall, the Sydney Opera House, the Barbican Centre, Walt Disney Concert Hall, and Red Rocks Amphitheater. He has collaborated across genres with artists such as Björk, Wilco, Bryce Dessner, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Dawn Upshaw, Philip Glass, and numerous leading jazz musicians, and has been featured on recordings across labels including Nonesuch, New Amsterdam, Naxos, and Cedille.

Photinos is a faculty member at the Bang on a Can Summer Music Festival and performs with the Grossman Ensemble at the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition. His recordings and projects include critically acclaimed releases such as Petits Artéfacts, and he has been recognized with honors including Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year Award, the Naumburg Award, the Chamber Music America Visionary Award, and the Concert Artists Guild Grand Prize. He holds degrees from Northwestern University, the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and Oberlin Conservatory of Music.