Zen Kuriyama

Musicologist, Conductor, Singer

Zen Tadashi Kuriyama

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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 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 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.

Invited talks include presentations at the University of St Andrews, Scotland (2023) and the University of Cambridge, UK (2021). Recently, Zen gave a talk at the Harvard Catholic Forum titled “Faure’s Requiem: Death in the Light of Eternity”; a presentation called “It was a poem first: towards a more effective pedagogy in the teaching of art song” at the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS), Maine Chapter, Annual Festival; guest conducted the chorus at the SUNY Schenectady School of Music; and led a workshop for the Maine Gay Men’s Chorus, all in November 2024. In March 2025, he will give an invited talk at Reed College (Portland, Oregon) titled, “‘Too Cosmopolitan’: Anti-Alienism, Gerald Finzi, and the English Musical Renaissance.” In April 2025, he will give the pre-concert lecture for Considering Matthew Shepard at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN.

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. 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 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.

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. In May 2026, Zen will serve as Chorus Master for the Midcoast Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Mahler #2. 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.

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.

© Zen Kuriyama 2025