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, where he currently serves as Music Director.
Zach was awarded Third Prize in The American Prize in Orchestral Programming—Vytautas Marijosius Memorial Award for 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.
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 MAGFest Orchestra, Awesöme Orchestra Collective, Temple Beit HaYam Choir, and VGM CON Orchestra Clinic.
In 2025, Zach collaborated with flautist Emily Duncan to record Randall Woolf’s concerto for beatbox flute and string orchestra, “Native Tongues”, on her album Woolf at the Door released by Neuma Records.
Zach actively advocates for the artistic programming of video game music. He was invited to lead a panel titled “The Case for VGM in Orchestral Programming” at the 2025 Super MAGFest and 2024 MAGWest conferences. 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.
He has honed his conducting craft through programs including Juilliard Extension, the Advanced Orchestral Conducting Workshop at the University of North Texas, JMU Conducting Workshops, and the Orchestra Conducting Symposium at University of Colorado Boulder. He has taken private study with conductors Tristan Rais-Sherman, Mark Shapiro, Kensho Watanabe, and Bruce Uchimura.
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.