John Kuzma began playing and writing music in sixth grade, at first self taught and later studying organ privately and piano at the Cincinnati Conservatory. He attended the Eastman School of Music as an organ performance major and graduated with distinction in 1968. As a Fulbright scholar he studied Baroque music in Copenhagen, Denmark, returning to the US for graduate studies at the University of Illinois.

Mr. Kuzma led the Boychoir program at California’s Crystal Cathedral and was Music Director of the San Diego Chamber Orchestra, and the American Boychoir, Princeton, NJ. His own compositions have been performed by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Many Colorado groups have performed his music including the Denver Brass, the Colorado Children’s Chorale, the Ars Nova Singers, and the Denver Gay Men’s Chorus. Mr. Kuzma recently completed a full length opera - An Island of Sand., in collaboration with librettist Thomas H. Troeger. In 1993, he  composed and arranged music for Pope John Paul II’s Denver visit at World Youth Day. His cantata “A Balm in Gilead” was performed at Carnegie Hall in 2002. Mr. Kuzma’s compositions are published by Yelton Rhodes, Los Angeles. He was a 1999 Colorado Council on the Arts Music Composition Fellow, and has been Minister of Music at Denver’s Montview Presbyterian Church since 1987. He lives in Denver with his wife, Bess.