Zen Tadashi Kuriyama
Ph.D., Brandeis University
M.F.A., Brandeis University
M.S.M., University of Notre Dame
M.Mus., Stony Brook University
B.A., University of Hawaii at Mānoa
(For CV, click here)
Zen Kuriyama is a Japanese-American musicologist, conductor, and singer. He is Assistant Professor of Music (tenure track) at Bates College in Lewiston, ME. Before his appointment at Bates, Zen was Assistant Professor of Music History at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. He holds a PhD in musicology from Brandeis University.
Zen specializes on the composer Gerald Finzi, Jewishness and antisemitism in nineteenth and twentieth-century musical culture, and on a wide range of Christian sacred music. His doctoral dissertation, “Englishness, Jewishness, and the English Sound: Gerald Finzi and the English Musical Renaissance,” was directed by Emily Frey, Susan Youens, and Laura Jockusch. It was a recipient of a Graduate Research Award from the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry; a PhD Research Award from the Brandeis Graduate School of Arts & Sciences; and the Brandeis University Provost Dissertation Fellowship Award. Zen received the MFA degree in musicology from Brandeis in 2021.
Recent invited talks include presentations at the University of St Andrews, Scotland (2023) and the University of Cambridge, UK (2021). Zen will give a talk at the Harvard Catholic Forum titled “Faure’s Requiem in its musical and theological contexts” in November 2024.
Zen’s first book chapter-length publication was featured in the peer-reviewed scholarly volume, Christian Sacred Music in the Americas, published by Rowman & Littlefield in February 2021 (edited by Andrew Shenton and Joanna Smolko).
A graduate of the University of Notre Dame (‘19), Zen holds a Master of Sacred Music degree in Choral Conducting. Zen studied conducting with the late Dr Carmen-Helena Téllez and had a secondary-area focus in musicology under the supervision of Dr Christopher Chowrimootoo.
A lyric baritone specializing in song literature, Zen holds a Master of Music degree in Voice Performance from Stony Brook University ('17), where he studied with Randall Scarlata. At Stony Brook—where he was the recipient of the Belari Scholarship in Voice—Zen held a dual Graduate Teaching Assistantship appointment: one in musicology and the other in choral conducting. Zen served as the Graduate Assistant Conductor of the Stony Brook Chorale and Camerata Singers, in addition to guest conducting the Stony Brook Chamber Orchestra. He has been cast in leading roles with Stony Brook Opera, and was a vocal soloist with the Stony Brook Baroque Ensemble. Zen earned a B.A. in Music, magna cum laude, from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa ('15), where he studied both voice and musicology and was a 2014 Presser Scholar.
Zen has guest lectured at the college level on the works of Gerald Finzi, including giving invited lectures on Finzi at the University of St Andrews (Scotland), St Mary’s College, Indiana, Tennessee Tech University, and Bates College. A recipient of the Alice Martin Travel Scholarship, Zen travelled to Georgia (the country in Eurasia) in May 2018 where he studied Georgian Orthodox Church chant and traditional Georgian folk music at the Institute for Ecclesiastical Chant in Tbilisi and at the music conservatory in Telavi, Kakheti.
Zen has provided the program-booklet essays for Musica Sacra New York, conducted by Kent Tritle. Recent program notes include Handel’s Messiah at Carnegie Hall (published in Playbill); “Music for a Gothic Space” at the Cathedral of St John the Divine, NYC; and “Under the Arches,” featuring the music of Bach, Brahms, Bruckner, and Rheinberger. Other collaborations include being a musicological research assistant for the Baltimore Choral Arts Society in Summer 2020.
As a professional chamber choir singer, Zen was part of the sextet that performed Philip Glass’ A Madrigal Opera at the University of Notre Dame in April 2019, with Mr Glass in attendance. Zen has been a conducting apprentice for Kent Tritle (Mahler’s Symphony No. 8) and Tom Hall (Verdi’s Requiem), and has participated in conducting masterclasses with Joseph Flummerfelt, Walter Marzilli, Kimberly Dunn Adams, and Alastair Willis. He has attended the Amherst Early Music Festival's Ensemble Singing Intensive and was a 2016 Singing Fellow at the Yale School of Music/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival's Chamber Choir & Choral Conducting Workshop, under Simon Carrington.
For excellence in the study of music in the State of Hawaii, Zen received the Clarence Glick Classical Music Foundation Grant. He is a proud member of the American Musicological Society, the American Choral Directors Association, the Association for Jewish Studies, and the North American Conference on British Studies.