
Project Portfolio
Multimedia projects & collaborations

Resonant Coast (2025)
Awarded the 2025 Connecticut Sea Grant Arts Support Award, Resonant Coast is a sonic and visual exploration of memory, migration, and identity along the shifting shorelines of the American coastline.

Sound Worlds (2025)
2025 Sound Worlds, is a a one-hour program featuring music for violin and electronics. The program features music by Hunter Prueger, ('Silent Moment'), Brannon Warn-Johnston ('A Year with Cancer’), Patrick Long ('Shadow Steps'), and Aaron Levin, (‘Video game Vespers").

Electroacoustic Collaborations with Seattle Symphony’s Merriman-Ross Young Composers Workshop (2024)
This season’s workshop was unlike any before as students mastered the art of blending electronic sounds with live symphony instruments while utilizing the advanced technology of Benaroya Hall’s Octave 9: Raisbeck Music Center.

Cabins and Hideouts (2023)
Bassist-composer Lauri Porra’s Cabins & Hideouts is a meditative work that takes listeners to the forest, lake and summer cottage. Described as a combination of concert and sound bath, the work includes the sounds of nature (finch and Kuika birdsong) paired with orchestral instruments.

“Refugio Nuevo” (2023) remix for the Yale Tango Club
Made of cutting edge technologies used for identifying and conserving species to create ‘place based’ music by making the birds sing a song, we combined everyday sounds captured by game cameras, and were provided with information on how many species used the Yale farm as a habitat throughout the year or throughout the migratory journeys. The song, "Refugio Nuevo", is made up of the collection of these sounds on top of the harmonies of the popular tango classic "La Cumparsita", and violin improvisation.

The Sounds of New England (2023)
A six-movement work featuring collected sounds and melodies from low-income and under-resourced communities in the Northeast. Featuring solo violin, loop pedal, composed and improvised music interwoven with music and other sounds of the communities I visited.

Music and Art in Conversation (2023)
Performance featuring spoken word (Alexa Fitzpatrick), music (Ilana Zaks), and mingling with the Guilford Art League’s 75th Annual Exhibition at the Guilford Art Center.

When Speech Becomes Violence (2023)
Featuring composer Hunter Prueger’s ‘Silent Moment’ (2022). This final piece is a visual and aural interpretation of the theme of the exhibit, and a warning to us all, as we continue to experience school shooting tragedies around the country.

Colorful Library (2023)
With Yale School of Art Graphic Design Artist, Filip Birkner MFA ‘23. Featuring live improvisation, motion capture, and stop motion.

The Violin Reimagined: A Performance Installation (2022)
A performance installation featuring wearable technology, video game design, animation, and film at Yale University.

Play (2022)
An original show, directed by Ilana Zaks, in collaboration with 2x Olympic rhythmic gymnast Laura Zeng, filmmaker Olivia Charis, projection designer Sasha Semina, lighting designer Corinne Evans, and jazz vocalist Theodora 'Teddy’ Horangic.

The Intermedial Performer (2021)
The Intermedial Performer explores the relationship between music and performance art across four technological collaborations. Edited by Samuel Vladimirsky.

Flying Forward (2020)
Originally to have been presented by Boston’s New England Conservatory at the Plimpton Shattuck Black Box Theater, Flying Forward will be a 50 minute documentary premiere screening followed by an innovative and interactive 30 minute dance premiere performance of Jennifer Higdon’s Violin Concerto with soloist Ilana Zaks, the Kairos Dance Theater, an all female-identifying orchestra comprising of Boston based college musicians and live digital art.

Persistence of Memory (2020)
The Persistence of Memory (2020), is the first ever classical music visual album released on Amazon Prime worldwide. This dual compilation of film and album featured three commissions for violin and percussion and three solo violin works in collaboration with dance, digital art, spoken word, animation, fashion and film.
“Zaks’ technical command certainly shines through this work and throughout the entire album, but she blossoms in her pathos and commitment to this new sound world of delicious contrasts. … Zaks’ debut album insightfully explores the dynamics between contrasting ideals: dreams versus reality, hardness versus softness, destruction versus beauty.” — The Classical Post