Ian Maskin and the ZARIA band

Russian-born Chicago-based cellist and composer Ian Maksin has gained international recognition for his beautiful tone, his unique innovative style of playing the instrument, and for taking the cello well outside its conventional role.

As a soloist, he gives more than two hundred public performances annually in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. He has performed in many prestigious concert halls throughout the world and has appeared at festivals such as Ravinia and Lollapalooza in the USA, Spoleto and Ravenna in Italy, and the White Nights Festival in Russia.

Apart from being highly regarded as a classical artist, Maksin collaborates with other artists in a variety of musical genres: jazz, blues, flamenco, rock, R&B, and world music, blending many styles together using cello as the common denominator. He can often be heard and seen in collaborative projects with artists from different corners of the globe: Morocco, Cuba, Serbia, Iran, Pakistan, India, Spain, Mexico, Japan, just to name a few. As a guest artist, he has performed and recorded with such artists as Andrea Bocelli, P. Diddy, Snoop Dogg, Gloria Estefan, and Barry Gibb. He has also opened performances for Sting and his guitarist Dominic Miller .