Ben Kazez is a baritone working across Europe in concert, opera, and recital, in repertoire from Bach’s Passions to Elgar and Barber. He has appeared as a soloist with the Academy of Ancient Music, La Cetra Barockorchester, the Netherlands Bach Society, B’Rock Orchestra, and Vox Luminis.
He has sung Bach, Telemann, and Graupner cantata solos with the Academy of Ancient Music under Laurence Cummings, earning a five-star review in Bachtrack. With La Cetra under Andrea Marcon he sang Bach’s Christmas Oratorio at the Basel Stadtcasino and the Freiburg Konzerthaus, alongside Robin Johannsen, Alex Potter, and Jakob Pilgram, broadcast on Swiss radio. He has also sung Bach’s duet cantata 32 with B’Rock Orchestra and Cecilia Bernardini.
Bach’s Passions are at the center of his work. He has sung Christus and Pilate in both the St Matthew and St John Passions, including Pilate and Pontifex with the Netherlands Bach Society under Masato Suzuki. He has toured the Matthew Passion one voice per part with Nieuwe Philharmonie Utrecht under Johannes Leertouwer in three consecutive seasons and has appeared annually as a Passion soloist at Amsterdam’s Westerkerk since 2019. He sang Bach cantata solos at Bachfest Leipzig in the Nikolaikirche under Lionel Meunier, broadcast on German radio. With Vox Luminis he has sung Zelenka solos in Paris, broadcast on Arte.tv, and Herod in Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. In Handel, he has sung the title role of Hercules in concert under Václav Luks at Barcelona’s Petit Palau and Valens in Theodora under Christian Curnyn at Snape Maltings. With Gli Angeli de Genève he has toured Messiah, and with Thomas Dunford’s Ensemble Jupiter he sang in Theodora at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and the Royal Chapel of Versailles.
A lover of later chamber works, he has sung songs from Elgar’s Sea Pictures, Barber’s Dover Beach, and a contemporary premiere at the Vlieland Chamber Music Festival, and at Festival Toulouse les Orgues he performed Ravel, Poulenc, and Liszt with organist Laurens de Man, winner of the Dutch Music Prize. With Laurens he forms a regular duo whose programs range from Gregorian chant and Schubert on fortepiano to Bernstein and the satire of Tom Lehrer. Future seasons bring a recital at the Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ in Amsterdam, songs of Fauré, Debussy, and Vaughan Williams for De Leidse Salon, and a program with the Chimaera Trio.
Ben has come to view recording as an integral part of music-making. He studied producing and engineering with a Tonmeister from Deutsche Grammophon and the Berlin Philharmonic in order to make his own recordings, and now colleagues ask him to make theirs. He has produced and engineered a CD with Laurens de Man conceived to capture the original acoustic of the Janskerk in Utrecht and its historic organ, and albums for tenor Brian Thorsett and soprano Maya Kherani. He recently recorded and produced the next solo album for the lutenist Thomas Dunford.
Ben trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and as a Britten-Pears young artist, and spent several seasons in the Monteverdi Choir under Sir John Eliot Gardiner, singing at venues such as the Vienna Musikverein, BBC Proms (Royal Albert Hall), and Berlin Philharmonie. Originally a software designer, he has built apps described as “brilliant” by the New York Times and runs VMII.org, a searchable index of early vocal music used by half a million visitors a year.