John Ken Nuzzo

Nuzzo was born in Tokyo on 5 May 1966 to a Japanese mother and an American-Italian father. Nuzzo was involved in theater in middle school and attended an international high school. While in high school, the school's music teacher Don Campbell, who would later go on to write the musical therapy book The Mozart Effect, urged him to join the Boy's Chorus. After high school, Nuzzo moved to the United States and attended Chapman University in California. Despite initially enrolling as a business major, Nuzzo became interested in a career in music during his third year. In 1997, he won first prize in the Japan Vocal Competition, a Japanese singing competition. The following year, he won the Japan round of the International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition in Vienna, which led to an opportunity to perform with the Vienna State Opera. In 2011, he sang in Giacomo Puccini's La bohème at the Anchorage Opera House. In March of that year, the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and ensuing tsunami struck Japan. Nuzzo was drafted by TV stations to provide voice recordings for transit systems after the disaster. ==Awards==