Timothy Zavadil

Timothy Zavadil joined the Minnesota Orchestra in 2007 as clarinetist and bass clarinetist, and he has since played those instruments as well as E-flat clarinet, contrabass clarinet, basset horn and saxophones. Previously a member of the Louisville Orchestra, Toledo Symphony and Civic Orchestra of Chicago, he has also performed with the New York Philharmonic and the Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, National, Toronto and St. Louis symphony orchestras, under such conductors as Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Sir George Solti, David Robertson, Alan Gilbert, Franz Welser-Möst, Zubin Mehta and Christoph Eschenbach.

Zavadil has been active with a variety of summer festivals, such as Lakes Area Music Festival (Brainerd, MN), Peninsula Music Festival (Door County, WI), Spoleto (Italy) Festival Orchestra, Grant Park Symphony Orchestra, National Repertory Orchestra, American-Russian Youth Orchestra and the 1994 Solti Orchestral Project at Carnegie Hall.

An active chamber musician, he has performed in several Minnesota Orchestra chamber concerts, as well as with a number of other ensembles based in the Twin Cities, Louisville and Toledo.

In 2016 Zavadil became the Director of Artistic Operations for the Cuban American Youth Orchestra, a Minnesota based non-profit whose mission is to bring young American and Cuban musicians together to perform orchestral and chamber music and train them to be cultural ambassadors.

In April 2019 Zavadil gave the North American premiere of American composer Geoffrey Gordon's Prometheus Concerto for Bass Clarinet and Orchestra with the Minnesota Orchestra under the baton of Osmo Vänskä.

A native of St. Louis, Missouri, Zavadil holds master and bachelor of music degrees from, respectively, Northwestern University and DePaul University, and counts J. Lawrie Bloom, Russell Dagon, John Bruce Yeh and Larry Combs among his primary teachers.