Ukrainian-born conductor Dr. Maxim Kuzin is a musician equally at home in the symphonic, operatic, and choral worlds. Now based in Los Angeles, he serves as Music Director of the Palisades Symphony Orchestra and the Thousand Oaks Philharmonic, Conductor of the TEMPO Ensemble at California State University, Northridge, and Co-Music Director of the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Chorale, and for seven seasons led the UC Santa Barbara Chamber Orchestra. A graduate of Kyiv’s Tchaikovsky National Musical Academy, he earned his Doctor of Musical Arts at UCLA; his dissertation on Beethoven’s Eroica won the admiration of conductor Benjamin Zander, who drew on it for his own performance of the symphony.
Before moving to the United States in 2014, Dr. Kuzin conducted Ukraine’s National Symphony, National Philharmonic, and National President’s Orchestras and the National Symphony Orchestra of Georgia. A devoted advocate for new music, he led Kyiv’s Ricochet New Music Ensemble and continues that work today at CSUN’s TEMPO Ensemble; on the opera stage, he has led more than twenty productions across Ukraine, Russia, and the United States. Named an “Emerging Artist” by the League of American Orchestras, he also serves as Cultural Director of the Ukrainian Culture Center in Los Angeles. Whether on the symphonic stage, in the opera pit, or before a chorus, he conducts with the conviction that great music belongs to everyone.