British tenor Andrew Kennedy, who was born in 1977 in Northumberland, had his first musical experiences as a choirboy at Durham Cathedral before going on to study at King’s College in Cambridge as well as at the Royal College of Music in London; he was accepted into the Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House and in 2005 won the Rosenblatt Recital Prize at the BBC Singer of the World Competition. The following year he garnered the Borletti Buitoni Trust Award and the Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artists’ Award. Kennedy has performed Tamino in The Magic Flute at English National Opera, Flute in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Royal Opera House, and Jaquino in Beethoven’s Fidelio at the Glyndebourne Festival. Other credits include Tom Rakewell in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels and at La Scala in Milan, Mozart’s Don Ottavio and Tito at the National Opera of Lyon, and Captain Vere in Britten’s Billy Budd at Houston Grand Opera. In 2011 he made his debut at the Opéra-Comique in Paris as Max in Der Freischütz under John Eliot Gardiner. Along with his stage appearances, Kennedy is also deeply devoted to concert singing. He has worked with the London Symphony Orchestra and Colin Davis, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Roger Norrington, the London Philharmonic under Vladimir Jurowski, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Paul Daniel. As a lieder singer, he has given numerous recitals throughout Europe; among his piano partners are Julius Drake, Roger Vignoles, Iain Burnside, and Malcolm Martineau. Kennedy’s recordings include Strauss lieder, Vaughan Williams’s On Wenlock Edge, and an album of arias by Mozart, Gluck, and Berlioz.
April 2012