Marika Kuzma

ABOUT

Conductor Marika Kuzma has gained recognition internationally as a music director and conductor of unusual versatility and high standards. Her concerts both as a conductor of her own concerts and her collaborations as chorusmaster have gained critical acclaim in the New York Times, Opera News, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, Le Devoir, La Presse, and others. After a brief hiatus from conducting to explore theater and spoken word performance, her recent concerts have integrated art forms in exciting ways. To quote audience members from her June 2023 concert in Washington, DC: “I’ve never experienced anything this moving in a concert hall before.”

Kuzma’s repertoire, tastes, and accomplishments are unusually eclectic. Among the highlights of her career are conducting the Britten War Requiem at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, California to an audience of thousands a sold-out concert “a cappella next” of new works in English, Tagalog, and Ukrainian at Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, Feldman Rothko Chapel with the Abel-Steinberg-Winant trio to a shoulder-to-shoulder audience at the Berkeley Art Museum; a full-house Stravinsky Svadebka [Les Noces] as part of an International Glinka Symposium; a sold-out Bach St. Matthew Passion at Hertz Hall in Berkeley; a sold-out Verdi Requiem with the Handel Society of Hanover; a sold-out Dufay Missa ave regina celorum for the Berkeley Early Music Festival; Reich Tehillim at Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco; and capacity concerts of “Christmas in Ukraine” with Cappella Romana in Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco. As a champion of contemporary as well as early and classical-romantic music, she has conducted West Coast and American premieres of Aleksiychuk, Sviat; Reich, Proverb; Rzewsky, Lost Melody. Takemitsu, Gemeaux alongside Kent Nagano; Weston, Maat Musings, among others. Last December, she was invited to conduct the Cape Symphony in a new arrangement of Leontovych, Shchedryk to standing ovations.

In the last few years, Kuzma has been enjoying a new chapter, or “reboot” in her career to enthusiastic audience response. After retiring from her professorial position at the University of California, Berkeley, and during the pandemic, she took a hiatus to study acting in San Francisco and New York and relocated to the East Coast. Now as an actor-musician—she has appeared in a leading role at Berkeley Rep and at Marin Shakespeare, La MaMa Theater, and HB Studios in New York—she has been integrating music, theater, and visual art forms to meet the needs of the changing classical world. At a concert that included Copland, Appalachian Spring with members of the New Haven Symphony, she included a monologue from a Chekhov play and a poem by Pablo Neruda about the power of nature. In her concerts this last year to raise funds and raise awareness about Ukraine, she herself has recited poetry by Ukrainian dissident writers. In June 2023, she was invited by the New Haven International Festival of Arts to create a performance of music, spoken word, and projected images that gained an immediate standing ovation. The repeat concert in Washington, DC received the same response. More

PROGRAMMING IDEAS

Kuzma enjoys guest spots with orchestras, choirs, opera theaters, theaters serving as a guest conductor/chorusmaster/consultant She especially appreciates cross-cultural collaborations, community outreach, combining art forms and innovative programming of orchestral/choral music. Programming ideas include:

SLAVIC MUSIC. Kuzma specializes in Slavic music and has  given talks and concerts internationally.

LES NOCES/SVADEBKA. She has conducted it four times in several contexts—including an international symposium on Glinka— and written articles about it. Her supertitle translations have been used by SF Symphony, Trinity Wall Street, U of Maryland, Yale.

BRUNDIBAR PROPOSAL . Kuzma is prepared to lead this piece as a tribute to her  first violinteacher Joza Karas, who uncovered this concentration camp children’s operetta.

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Music Samples

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Listed: Conductor