Kevin Bazzana

Bazzana, Kevin

 Kevin (John) Bazzana. Musicologist, writer, editor, educator, b Kelowna, BC, 27 Jul 1963; B MUS (Victoria) 1988, MA (Stanford) 1989, PhD (California, Berkeley) 1996. Bazzana studied drama at the University of Calgary 1980-1 before beginning post-secondary studies in music. He attended Okanagan College 1983-4 and the University of Victoria 1984-8, where he received the Victoria Medal for academic excellence. He pursued graduate studies in music history and performance practice at Stanford University 1988-90 and at the University of California, Berkeley, 1990-6.

Writing, Editing, and Teaching

Although Bazzana initially aspired to an academic career, he soon became interested in writing for a more general audience. After graduating from Berkeley, he began a career as a freelance writer and editor. He has written articles and reviews for numerous newspapers, magazines, and periodicals, including The Globe and Mail, Fanfare, The Musical Quarterly, the Canadian University Music Review, and The Piano Quarterly. He has also contributed to the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, The Canadian Encyclopedia, the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Bazzana served as editor of The Beethoven Journal (1990-2, 1999, and 2007), and was founding editor of GlennGould, the journal of the Glenn Gould Foundation (1995-2005, 2007-8). He began writing program notes for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in 1996, and in 2009 he became the classical music columnist for the Times Colonist (Victoria).

Bazzana was a sessional lecturer at the University of Victoria's School of Music 1993-4, and began lecturing in their division of Continuing Studies in 1993.

Glenn Gould Research

Bazzana has had a long-standing and enthusiastic interest in Canadian pianist Glenn Gould. His work on the subject, including two books and numerous articles, reviews, lectures, and broadcasts, has established him as Canada's leading Gould authority. Bazzana's doctoral dissertation on Gould, completed under the supervision of Richard Taruskin, was published as Glenn Gould: The Performer in the Work - A Study in Performance Practice in 1997. This was followed in 2003 by Bazzana's critically acclaimed Gould biography, Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould. Wondrous Strange received the Toronto Book Award in 2004, and won the ASCAP Nicolas Slonimsky Award for Musical Biography in 2005.

Bazzana has been a guest lecturer at Glenn Gould conferences and exhibitions in Victoria, Toronto, Amsterdam, and Groningen, The Netherlands. He was featured in the BBC Radio documentary Gould, Tobacco, Bach ("Between the Ears," 1998) and the CBC Radio documentary Themes & Variations: The Radio Documentaries of Glenn Gould ("In Performance," 2001). In 1999 he helped create and appeared in the CBC Radio four-part series "Listening to Glenn Gould." Bazzana was also a consultant on the 2009 film documentary Genius Within (Michèle Hozer and Peter Raymont, directors).

Other Publications

Bazzana's third book, Lost Genius: The Story of a Forgotten Musical Maverick (2007) profiled the Hungarian-American pianist and composer Ervin Nyiregyházi. In 2008 Lost Genius also won the ASCAP Nicolas Slonimsky Award for Musical Biography, and was shortlisted for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction.

Selected Writings

"La conciliation dans la musique de William Byrd," Sonances, vol 6, no 4, 1987

"Berlioz's 'Musical Celebrations at Bonn,'" The Beethoven Newsletter, vol 6, no 1, 1991

"Eternal Gould: Eight new recordings of Glenn Gould, from King Records," Fanfare, vol 15, no 2, 1991

"Glenn Gould: Nine recent recordings from Music and Arts Programs of America," The Piano Quarterly, vol 39, no 1, 1991

"The uses and limits of performance practice in François Couperin's 'Huitieme Ordre,'" The Musical Quarterly, vol 75, no 1, 1991

"The 'Beethoven-Album': Supplement to the Beethoven festival at Bonn, August 1845," The Beethoven Newsletter, vol 7, no 2, 1992

"The first movement of Beethoven's 'Opus 109': Compositional genesis and structural dialect," Canadian University Music Review, vol 12, no 1, 1992

"Glenn aplenty: Sony Classical's new 'Glenn Gould Edition' and 'Glenn Gould Collection,'" Fanfare, vol 16, no 3, 1993

Glenn Gould: The Performer in the Work - A Study in Performance Practice (Oxford 1997)

Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould (Toronto 2003)

Lost Genius: The Story of a Forgotten Musical Maverick (Toronto 2007)