Cellist Zuill Bailey is among the foremost U.S. cellists, making numerous concerto, recital, and chamber music appearances around the Western hemisphere. He records for Steinway Sons and other labels.

He was born James Zuill Bailey in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1972. His father was a music education scholar, and his mother was a pianist, and he took Suzuki lessons on the cello as a child. Growing up in northern Virginia, he had access to the world-class concert scene of Washington, D.C., and specifically to the activities of cellist and National Symphony Orchestra conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, who would make visiting musicians available for lessons through the symphony's fellowship program. Thus Bailey was able to take lessons with Lynn Harrell and Janos Starker, among others. He went on to earn an undergraduate degree at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore and then a master's at the Juilliard School, where he studied with Joel Krosnick of the Juilliard String Quartet. Bailey's New York recital debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with pianist Simone Dinnerstein was sold out, and his self-titled 2003 recording debut on the Delos label also featured Dinnerstein.

Bailey has gone on to make appearances at top national venues such as Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall. He has a particularly strong record of concerto appearances, including not only performances with major American orchestras but also those in Mexico, Japan, and Cuba, where he gave that country's premiere of Victor Herbert's Cello Concerto No. 2 with the National Orchestra of Cuba. An enthusiastic chamber music player, Bailey is a member of a piano trio with Navah Perlman and Giora Schmidt. Among his frequent recital partners have been pianists Awadagin Pratt and Orion Weiss.

Bailey's recording catalog is large, especially by American standards. He has recorded for various labels, including Delos, Telarc, and, since the 2014 album Some Other Time, Steinway Sons. On the latter label, he released a recording of Schumann's Cello Concerto and Brahms' Double Concerto, joined by violinist Philippe Quint on the Brahms in 2019. The following year, he returned on Steinway Sons, joining the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra in a recording of William Walton's Cello Concerto. In 2022, he returned to Delos for a recording of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Cello Concerto with the Santa Rosa Symphony Orchestra. Bailey is a professor of cello at the University of Texas at El Paso. ~ James Manheim, Rovi