Obituary: Joel Kabakov

Joel attended undergraduate school at UC Berkeley, completing a B.A. in music in 1966. From there, he went to Harvard to study composition with his mentor, Leon Kirchner, and with renowned composer Leonard Bernstein. Joel served as chair of composition at the Boston Conservatory from 1973-1978, concurrent with a Graduate Prize Fellowship at Harvard, where he also taught Performance and Analysis. He trained to be a classical composer, but his creative interests exceeded the tradition; beginning in the 1960s, his attention turned to Indian classical music, Flamenco, and other non-Western forms that he would participate in and focus on for the remainder of his life, both in his own compositions, and his teaching of ethnomusicology. His Ph.D. thesis is titled “El Jaleo,” a dance suite for orchestra with embedded flamenco guitars. While at Harvard, he also began to write poetry, catalyzed by encounters with master poets Octavio Paz and Robert Lowell.

While residing in Cambridge, Joel married Antonia Rojas, then principal dancer with the Jose Greco Company, beginning a union that would last through his life, for the next 54 years. They had two children, daughters Ianthe and Solea, before returning to California in 1977. In their lifelong artistic partnership, Joel and Antonia collaborated as composer-guitarist and dancer-choreographer, creating their own performance company with his original music and her choreographies. They performed with the Boston Symphony, Young Audiences lecture concerts, The España Institute at Boston Conservatory where they both served on the faculty, The Methow Music Festival, M.I.T., UC Irvine, Spokane Youth Symphony, La Mirada Symphony, the Frye Museum of Seattle, and numerous other venues. During their early years of participation in public arts and activism, Joel and Antonia were awarded the Paul Revere Cup of Boston, for exceptional service to the people of Boston through the arts.

Joel joined the Yamaha Corporation in 1979 as director of advanced curricula and instruction, and from 1980-1989, Joel was composer in residence at South Coast Repertory Theatre. During his time in California, he was awarded "The Golden Baton" by the Young Musicians foundation for outstanding service to the young musicians in California. In 2000, after moving to Seattle, Wash., Joel joined Poets West, which presented him as a featured reader at many venues in the region. Culminating decades of Joel’s practice of writing verse — especially odes to loved ones, family, and friends — his book of collected poems, Available Light, was published in 2015 by Goldfish Press. His friend and fellow writer Peter Janney wrote of Joel’s poetry: "There are times in life (particularly now) when one has to take refuge in realms where the soul can be fed by 'available light.' Joel Kabakov's poems do just that. They are spellbinding verse encased in a consciousness that asks us to be reminded of what it means to be truly human, in a world that appears to be destroying everything human and beautiful."

Upon moving to The Dalles, Ore., Joel introduced a guitar and world music curriculum to the Columbia Gorge Community College, where he served on the faculty from 2006-2021. He taught private music students in The Dalles, and also founded the musical group Europatoia, which explored Jewish music from the Mediterranean and Balkans regions. In this group, which included Antonia on cajón and castanets, and their daughter Solea on cello, the Kabakovs performed at many Columbia River Gorge venues, such as Aniche Winery, Maryhill Winery, Erin Glen, The Pines, Klickitat Winery, The Lyle Hotel, and Columbia Gorge Community College. Always evolving his skills in several fields, as his nephew, Gabriel, said of Joel, “He taught me that virtuosity is a lifetime pursuit.” Indeed, Joel never stopped growing his capacity for intellectual and artistic creation. 

Joel additionally participated in community-based activism in The Dalles, joining a campaign for migrant justice, and working for related causes that he cared about all his life. In his later years, foremost on Joel’s mind was the misery caused by the acceleration of capitalism and war, from intimate and social life to the global scale. Joel blamed these conditions on contemporary forms of authoritarianism and fascism, writing, “The best way to unleash chaos is to demand order.” His historical, political and poetic critique is elaborated in his second book, Technofascism: The New World Disorder, published with Trineday Press in early 2022. 

For those who knew him, Joel will be remembered for his recalcitrance, his brilliant humor, and his playful imagination. He loved to cleverly turn a phrase into a provocative play on words, and always had a satirical list of bumper stickers and political slogans handy for discussion. His everyday conversation, as much as his teaching and writing, could take up the most profound of contemporary social, political, and ecological issues, but his demeanor remained light, humorous, and open to wonder. As his student Tamir wrote, "He always had this glint in his eyes that said, 'Check out the possibilities.'” His social life consisted of deep relationships with fellow artists, poets, and nonconformists, among whom he was considered a great friend, mentor and inspiration to many. One of the family’s closest friends, oil painter Tiffany Graham, wrote to him in a poem: “Your blend of delicacy and the monumental hearkens at once to lost truths and possible futures ..."

The legacy of Joel's loving heart and creative genius lives on in his wife and best friend, Antonia, his sisters Anne and Marsha, his daughters Ianthe and Solea, his nieces and nephew Brooke, Gabriel, and Shana, and his grandchildren and great-niece Asher, Dahlia, Izzy, Satya, Luc, Remy, and Zinnia. Antonia writes: “Of all the wonderful original and creative things he did, the most amazing gift of his genius was his unending love for all, and his devotion to discovering ways both grand and small, to bring peace and justice.” He is missed and beloved by all who knew his brilliant and gentle ways.

Everyone is invited to celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. Joel Kabakov at The Granada Theatre in The Dalles on Saturday, June 17 beginning at 11 a.m. and throughout the day.

joelkabakov.com