Elizabeth Kenny

Elizabeth Kenny is one of Europe’s leading lute players. She has played with many of the world’s best period instrument groups and experienced many different approaches to music making, and she has an extensive discography of collaborations with ensembles across Europe and the USA, and her own repertoire interests have led to critically acclaimed recordings of solo music from the ML Lute Book, and songs by Lawes, Purcell and Dowland. 

She has given premiere performances of solo and chamber pieces by James MacMillan, Benjamin Oliver, Heiner Goebbels and Rachel Stott.  In June 2019 she premiered Nico Muhly’s Berceuse for solo theorbo, which was written for her in 2018, and features on her CD Ars longa: Old and new music for theorbo for Linn records which was nominated in the 2020 BBC Music Magazine Awards in the Instrumental category.

In recent seasons, Elizabeth has performed a series of concerts with the Benedetti Baroque Orchestra, coinciding with a Decca Classics album release, and also played at Chiltern Arts, the Winchester Chamber Music and Salisbury International Arts Festivals, Tetbury Music Festival, Spitalfields Music Festival, London International Festival of Early Music, the Trigonale Festival der Alten Musik in Austria, Britten Pears Arts, the Ludlow English Song Weekend, the Newbury Spring Festival, and a recital programme ‘Cubaroque’ with Nicholas Mulroy and Toby Carr at the Lammermuir Festival.

This season she performs with the BBC Proms in Scotland, Oxford International Song Festival, Bath BachFest, Shakespeare in Music Festival, and Petworth Festival, to name a few.

She is currently Professor of Lute and Theorbo at the Royal Academy of Music.

Updated 6.9.24