Joel Kabakov PhD CURRICULUM VITAE
Joel Kabakov was raised in Los Angeles, educated at UC Berkeley in music and Harvard Graduate School in composition where he received a Graduate Prize Fellowship leading to a doctorate under mentor, Leon Kirchner augmented by a semester with Leonard Bernstein. While at Harvard, his poetical tendencies were catalyzed by encounters with master poets Octavio Paz and Robert Lowell.
Joel’s first career post was composition chair at the Boston Conservatory leading to collaborations with the Boston Museum School in multimedia, the Boston Ballet and Boston Symphony in a series of educational concerts on music and dance with all original music by the composer. What appeared to divert his already complex trajectory came in the form of an offer from the Yamaha Music Foundation to direct programs in prodigy education in composition, classical improvisation and performance.
Not until year 2000 and a move to Seattle did Kabakov take his writing public as a member of Poets West which presented him as featured reader at many venues in the region. “Available Light” is Kabakov’s book of collected poems published in 2015 by Goldfish Press, as reviewed –and quoted- by Harvard Colloquy, a quarterly publication of the graduate school of arts and science: “The poems are eloquent and well-crafted, the language ranging from fastidious and poetic to loose-limbed vernacular”…
JK now resides in The Dalles with his wife Antonia, is compiling his second book of poems, completing a discourse begun in 2017 on technofascism, teaching music at Columbia Gorge Community College and leading the eclectic music ensemble Europatopia . Kabakov owes much of his deep knowledge of technology to his seventeen years with Yamaha, many of which were focused on partnerships with academic based and music industry innovators as well as highly creative performing artists.
Kabakov and wife, Antonia, former principle dancer with the Jose Greco Spanish Ballet, reside in The Dalles Oregon just down the block from the next generation of Kabakovs, including four grand children.