Making Dreams Come True: Introducing Joel Balzun

Canadian barihunk Joel Balzun

We noticed this Twitter exchange and couldn't resist posting it. After all, we're not about making dreams come true, than what is our purpose?

Calgary-based Cowtown Opera wrote, "All the best to our #Barihunk @jdeebizzle on his recital tonight in #yyc!" To which Canadian baritone Joel Balzun replied, "@CowtownOpera I've finally achieved my dream of being called a #barihunk - thank you. #lifegoals #operaproblems"

Balzun has performed Fiorello in their production of The Barber of Cowtown, which set Rossini's classic opera in the Wild, Wild, West. Other companies that he's appeared with include his 2011 professional debut with the California International Theatre Festival, Calgary Concert Opera Company, La Mirada Vocal Arts, the Rochester Oratorio Society and performing the Four Villains in Offenbach's Les contes d’Hoffmann at the Napa Music Festival. He made his Kennedy Center debut singing excerpts from Puccini's Turandot, representing the Eastman School of Music as a part of the Conservatory Project. At Eastman he performed Sid in Britten's Albert Herring.

Joel Balzun (photo: Alexander Timmons)

He holds a Bachelor's degree in Music Composition from Biola University and recently graduated with a Master's degree in Vocal Performance from the Eastman School of Music. As a composer, he was named a finalist at the 2014 ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Awards, won the Grand Prize and Young Composers Prize in the National Broadcast Orchestra’s Galaxie Rising Star Composers’ Competition, and won the Dallas Wind Symphony’s 9th annual “Call for Fanfares.”

Joel Balzun is officially a barihunk!