He showed an early talent for music and studied piano at Juilliard School with Henriette Michaelson.
He left his piano study to serve in the Pacific during World War II, taking part in the final sweep of Okinawa after the island had surrendered.
Janwillem van de Wetering lived a year and a half in Daitoku-Ji with Nowick, and described this in The Empty Mirror.
[3] After the death of Zuigan Gotō in 1965, Nowick returned to the United States and began teaching Japanese musicians at his farm in Surry.
[5] In the mid-1980s, concerned with the looming possibility of nuclear holocaust,[citation needed] Nowick founded the Surry Opera Company, an amateur group that intended to strengthen ties with the Soviet Union at a citizen level.
[citation needed] He offered his resignation as a teacher, which was accepted by the student committee, and devoted himself to music full-time.
[citation needed] After some legal wrangling, the property reverted, as had been agreed before the student committee accepted his resignation, to the corporation, which had been reconstituted as the Morgan Bay Zendo (MBZ), with Nowick reserving some rights of usage.
[citation needed] Nowick continued to live in Surry much of his life, spending some of the winter in Japan and Russia.