Ben Kazez

Ben’s love for J.S. Bach has led to solo performances in the Passions, B Minor Mass, and 35 cantatas. As a Britten–Pears Young Artist he sang Bach cantatas under Mark Padmore (Snape Maltings, UK), and at Petit Palau de la Música Catalana (Barcelona) he sang Bach under Václav Luks and Shunske Sato. During the pandemic he recorded Bach’s Cantata 147a Herz und Mund for a stream with Bach Collegium San Diego, and in 2022 he returns to Europe to sing Pilate and arias in St John Passion at Amsterdam’s Westerkerk.

Ben is fluent in French and recently sang Clérambault’s Polyphème and Charpentier’s Les plaisirs de Versailles (Switzerland), Charpentier’s Le reniement de St Pierre and Rameau’s Aquilon et Orithie (Milton Court Concert Hall, London), and Charpentier’s Messe de minuit and In nativitatem Domini canticum (Bach Collegium San Diego). He has also sung Charpentier’s Messe à 8 at Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Festival.

Other recent solo performances include Handel’s Theodora (as a Britten–Pears Young Artist under Dame Sarah Connolly and Christian Curnyn), Handel’s Hercules at Petit Palau de la Música Catalana (Václav Luks and Shunske Sato), Vivaldi’s Gloria (Bach Collegium San Diego), and Messiah (St John’s Smith Square, London), and Schumann’s Dichterliebe in San Francisco. He has also performed Dowland song under Dame Emma Kirkby and Buxtehude cantatas at the London Handel Festival.

In the Monteverdi Choir under Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Ben has sung works from Monteverdi Vespers to Berlioz Benvenuto Cellini at the Salzburg Festival, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Berlin Philharmonie, Vienna Musikverein, Chapelle Royale and Opéra Royal de Versailles, Teatro La Fenice, Westminster Cathedral, and Royal Albert Hall (BBC Proms). He has also sung/recorded with Apollo’s Fire under Nicolas McGegan and Jeannette Sorrell, Italy-based Ghislieri at Festival d’Ambronay and Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra & Chorale under Richard Egarr.

During the pandemic, Ben co-created the Vocal Music Instrumentation Index, a search engine for vocal music. Since its launch in 2021, it has been featured by Juilliard, Curtis, Royal Academy of Music (London), Yale, and Stanford, and is now visited 80,000 times per year.

Ben graduated magna cum laude from Carleton College and spent the first five years of his career creating language and travel apps that the New York Times called “brilliant.” He became a Britten–Pears Young Artist in 2016 and earned a master’s degree from London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2018. He is fluent in French and Italian.