Ben Kazez

“Velvety and full voice…he delivered all his arias with great polish.” — Barcelona Classica, 2019

Baritone Ben Kazez enjoys an active career in concert, opera, and especially early music, with solo performances in Europe and North America under Dame Sarah Connolly, Václav Luks, Christian Curnyn, Shunske Sato, and Mark Padmore. Read More…

Recent solo concerts include Handel’s Theodora at Snape Maltings (Dame Sarah Connolly and Christian Curnyn), Handel’s Hercules at Barcelona’s Petit Palau (Václav Luks and Shunske Sato), Vivaldi and Bach with Bach Collegium San Diego (Ruben Valenzuela), and Dowland songs (Dame Emma Kirkby). Performances of Bach passions with Westerkerkkoor (Amsterdam) and Apollo’s Fire (Severance Hall) were cancelled due to the pandemic, but 2021–22 solo concerts include Messiah with Collegium Cincinnati and Fauré Requiem in California.

Ben is an avid performer of cantatas. He has sung Bach cantatas under Mark Padmore, Václav Luks, Shunske Sato, and Ruben Valenzuela, at Snape Maltings, L’Auditori, and Petit Palau de la Musica. At London Handel Festival he performed Buxtehude cantatas, and he has sung French cantatas at London’s Milton Court and the California Jazz Conservatory.

Ben has also sung in the Monteverdi Choir (Sir John Eliot Gardiner) at the Salzburg Festival, Versailles, Vienna Musikverein, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and BBC Proms (Royal Albert Hall). In Ghislieri Coro e Orchestra he has sung at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and recorded on Arcana. In 2021–22 Ben will join Apollo’s Fire for Messiah (Nic McGegan) and Handel’s Israel in Egypt (Jeannette Sorrell).

Ben’s operatic roles include Re di Scozia (Ariodante), Zoroastro (Orlando), and Grand Priest (Marais Sémélé at American Bach Soloists Festival). While at London’s Guildhall School, Ben performed in scenes from Castor et Pollux, Candide, Trouble in Tahiti (Sam), and Handel’s Almira.

Ben has studied art song with Martin Katz, Eugene Asti, and Peter Grunberg, with whom he performed a recital of Schubert and Pavel Haas. With Chamber Music Society of San Francisco he sang Barber’s Dover Beach at San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, and in 2021 he will sing Fauré and Poulenc in recital in California.

Ben is passionate about making baroque repertoire more accessible to audiences and performers. With trumpeter John Thiessen and violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock he created a concert pairing Bach cantatas with German food and wine, which drew 200 people — nearly half of them under 35. During the pandemic, Ben and flautist Anne Charrier created the Vocal Music Instrumentation Index, which so far has helped over 10,000 people find new repertoire by instrumentation, key, meter, and text.

Ben Kazez grew up in Ohio listening to his father practice Bach cello suites. He sang musical theater roles as a boy soprano but studied computer science at Carleton College, graduating magna cum laude. Ben interned at Apple and spent five years creating language and travel apps that the New York Times deemed “brilliant.” Ben became a Britten–Pears Young Artist in 2016 and earned a Master of Music from London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2018. He is fluent in French and Italian.