Elizabeth Kenny
Lute
Elizabeth Kenny is one of Europe’s leading lute players. Her playing has been described as “incandescent” (Music and Vision), “radical” (The Independent on Sunday) and “indecently beautiful” (Toronto Post).
She has devised several critically acclaimed recordings of solo music from the ML Lute Book, and, with long standing vocal partners, songs by Lawes, Purcell and Dowland. Her most recent solo recording, Ars Longa (Linn Records) was nominated for the BBC Music Magazine Solo Instrumental recording of the year 2019. She has an extensive discography of collaborations with chamber ensembles across Europe and the USA. In 2017 Shakespeare Songs with Ian Bostridge and co-collaborators won the Grammy best solo vocal recital, and the same year viol consort Phantasm and Kenny won the Gramophone Early Music award for their recording of Dowland’s Lachrime.
Kenny founded Theatre of the Ayre in 2007. Their various touring projects have sealed a reputation for an innovative and improvisatory approach to seventeenth-century music. Notable recording projects include John Blow’s Venus and Adonis (Wigmore Live, 2011). The Masque of Moments (Linn, 2017) and C17 Playlist, with tenor Ed Lyon (Delphian).
In thirty years of touring Kenny has played with many of the world’s best period instrument groups, including extended spells with Les Arts Florissants and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. She has given premiere performances of solo and chamber pieces by James MacMillan, Benjamin Oliver, Heiner Goebbels, Rachel Stott and Nico Muhly.
Elizabeth Kenny has been professor of Lute at the Royal Academy of Music since 1999, and Dean of Students since 2020. She was Professor of Musical Performance at the University of Southampton, and Director of Performance and Performance Studies at the University of Oxford between 2012 and 2020.
Updated 2.6.25
