Dr. Žak Ozmo

Dr. Žak Ozmo is a music professional (music direction, conducting, plucked instruments) and an academic with over 15 years of experience in entrepreneurship, innovation, and state-of-the-art international initiatives across multiple fields.   

His expertise covers music from ca. 1450 to the present and includes a wide variety of performance practices across both art and popular/folk genres.   

Žak is the founder-director of the period-instrument ensemble L’Avventura London, and has been praised in the press for ‘excellent musicianship’ and ‘searching intellect and wry imagination…beautiful, fluent playing’ (Gramophone). The majority of L’Avventura’s projects are based on his original research, performing editions, and arrangements.   L’Avventura’s performances include major festivals across the United Kingdom and international performances in some of the world’s best-known venues, including the Kölner Philharmonie in Cologne, Grande Auditório Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh, among others.   

Žak’s work further includes appearances as a guest director of various ensembles, orchestras, as well as theatre and opera companies internationally.  

As a direct result of his entrepreneurial experience and interdisciplinary approach to the field of historical performance practices, Žak is also the founding director of a groundbreaking clinical academic programme at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, Tennessee (U.S.A.), which focuses on the application of music and sound in treating cancer and other diseases.  He has expanded the programme into a city-wide initiative, including the city’s leading educational, research, healthcare, artistic, and religious organizations and individual artists.   

Žak’s ongoing programme of practice-led research is extensive, and it includes cross-cultural influences on Western music-making, including African-derived influences before 1800. He currently holds a Canada Council for the Arts grant for research in this area, including creating new concert programmes and writing a documentary series for BBC Television.  

Žak frequently presents his research at conferences in Europe and North America and speaks on various related topics on BBC Radio 3 and NPR.  2019 also saw his first TEDx Talk (Why Refugees are Integral to the Future of Art), and since the start of 2021, he has been producing and hosting a new monthly radio show titled Music and Medicine on the WYXR Station in Memphis, TN  (available on Spotify, Audible, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts). 

www.zakozmo.com