Zach Nicely is stamping his name in the classical music industry as “The Video Game Music Conductor.”
He is frequently called as a guest conductor and game music lecturer by ensembles, universities, and conferences across the country. He founded Press Start, a New York orchestra dedicated to programming video game music with classical favorites. Through his artistic direction, the orchestra presented two thrilling programs pairing Hollow Knight composer Christopher Larkin with Dmitri Shostakovich and Journey composer Austin Wintory with Samuel Barber.
He was a finalist for The American Prize in Orchestral Programming—Vytautas Marijosius Memorial Award in recognition of Press Start’s inaugural season. His work also caught the attention of the Mannes School of Music, who recruited him to develop such an ensemble for their pre-college program, the Game Orchestra at Mannes Prep. The Tuesdays@Rutgers concert series in New York City presented his Hollow Knight & Appalachian Spring program, which raised over $1,000 for the Harmony Program music education charity.
At home with both multimedia and scores born for the stage, Zach has conducted orchestras across the United States and Japan. He has served as Assistant Conductor with the Litha Symphony Orchestra and Music Director with Killer Queen Opera in New York City. Zach has appeared as a guest conductor with the Advanced Orchestral Conducting Workshop at the University of North Texas, Orchestra Conducting Symposium at University of Colorado Boulder, and the Tokyo Sinfonia.
Zach actively advocates for the artistic programming of video game music. In 2024 he was invited by the Music and Games (MAG) West conference to lead a panel titled “The Case for VGM in Orchestral Programming”. His essay “Video Game Music: A Connection Beyond the Controller” was published in the Lexia Undergraduate Journal in Writing, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication by the first unanimous vote of the journal’s editorial committee. He founded the Press Start Publishing company to fill the gap of properly licensed sheet music currently preventing most orchestras from performing this genre of contemporary classical music.
Zach toured with the Western Michigan University Symphony Orchestra in 2018-2019. While in Michigan, he organized and conducted an interactive rehearsal and concert, The Smash Experiment, featuring an orchestra playing video game scores in real time as audiences played the games themselves. Zach was awarded Western Michigan University’s Signature Designation in Leadership for this performance.