Zara was born and raised in NYC, spent most of a decade living in London as a young adult and has been based back in Brooklyn since 2011. She began studying piano and composition when she was five, and hasn’t quite figured out how to do anything aside from music-related stuff since.

Previously, she's toured internationally as a musician, was a sound engineer at Live Nation venues for three years and worked for EMI’s global HQ in London for four. Since returning to the NYC area, she's focused more on independent music projects rooted in underground electronic sounds. A lot of this was cultivated during the seven years in which she was a record buyer, events booker and manager at Brooklyn’s storied Halcyon, where she pushed to give local labels and upcoming artists a platform. Assisting DJ Jus-Ed and his legendary Underground Quality records for many years also strengthened her passion for DIY and community.

She was also a curator for the Grayscale event series, and worked on production & mgmt at Output until it closed; after which, you could catch her most weekends before COVID at Elsewhere and Public Records. Rediscovering a healthy circadian rhythm for the first time in decades during the pandemic lead to the decision not to do regular late nights anymore, but she still does event production and management on a freelance basis.

Zara is mainly working as a project director, broadcast engineer and event producer for NTS Radio these days, and has been involved since NTS began in 2011. It’s been a wild ride seeing this little DIY community station grow into a global music platform. She’s also been part of Unsound festival sine 2012; working as a curatorial advisor on its epic music programme, helping with various production bits and heading up its Mutual Respect / safe(r) space initiative that started in 2017. This latter work led to her co-founding Ecology of Care, which is an ongoing series about community care, harm reduction and mental health. EoC has standing partnerships with Horst Festival & Horst Lab, alongside Unsound and other new festivals, and has been featured in RA. She’s also part of the core crew behind Watching Trees Festival in the UK, along with personal heroes Optimo and the lovely Ransom Note team.

Locally, she’s still producing and curating events as part of Quo Vadis Productions, and is also the co-founder of INTERZONE festival. She’s also a co-founder of Sustain-Release & co-directed it for its first few years.  Her freelance music writing has spanned a variety of publications including: DJ Mag, XLR8R, Thump, The Quietus, Dummy and Resident Advisor.

All hosted media and site design © Zara Wladawsky | 2018