Elizabeth Kenny is one of Europe’s leading lute players. Her playing has been described as “incandescent” (Music and Vision), “radical” (The Independent) and “indecently beautiful” (Toronto Post). She has played with many of the world’s best period instrument groups and experienced many different approaches to music making. 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.
This season she performs at Temple Music, Oxford Song, Wigmore Hall, Leeds Song, Early Music in Yorkshire, and her programme ‘Cubaroque’ with Nicholas Mulroy and Toby Carr at Festival van Vlaanderen Antwerpen and also Cambridge Early Music Festival, which features music from both 17th century Europe and 20th century Latin America.
In recent seasons, Elizabeth has performed a series of concerts with the Benedetti Baroque Orchestra, coinciding with a Decca Classics album release, and has performed at numerous festivals including: the BBC Proms in Scotland, Oxford International Song, Bath BachFest, Shakespeare in Music, Petworth, Beverley Early Music, Cambridge Summer Music, LIFE Victoria in Barcelona, Chiltern Arts, Winchester Chamber Music, Salisbury International Arts, Tetbury Music, Spitalfields Music, London International Festival of Early Music, the Trigonale Festival der Alten Musik in Austria, Britten Pears Arts, Ludlow English Song Weekend, Newbury Spring, Lammermuir, and she has continued her collaboration with Isabelle Faust, Kristian Bezuidenhout and Kristin von der Goltz in a programme of Bach, Biber and Westhoff across Europe.
In 2007 Elizabeth founded her group Theatre of the Ayre, its focus on 17th Century vocal music with an improvisational character. She devised and directed Le Malade Imaginaire and A
Restoration Tempest for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. The group’s CD release, The Masque of Moments - their debut recording for Linn - was named ‘Disc of the Week’ on BBC Radio 3’s Record Review.
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. Elizabeth also appears alongside Ian Bostridge on Warner Classic’s Shakespeare Songs, which won a 2017 Grammy Award for ‘Best Classical Solo Vocal Album’.
She is currently Professor of Lute and Theorbo at the Royal Academy of Music.
This biography is for information only and should not be reproduced.
‘Women and Power’ with Nardus Williams & Mary Beard, Wigmore Hall
(March 2026)
Elizabeth Kenny’s playing throughout was of the highest quality… Her style has an insouciant elegance to it: the notes sat under her fingers as if they had always been there, and her immersion in the idiom was peerless – ornamentation happened as naturally as breathing, and the whole accompaniment constituted an elemental pairing with the singer.
Barry Creasy, MusicOMH
Mary Beard brings out the political undertones and classical references in music by 16th and 17th century Italian women composers in pleasingly direct and intimate performances from Nardus Williams and Elizabeth Kenny… She and Kenny projected this intimate music in Wigmore Hall in a way which drew us in and did not suggest any need to amplify their manner to fill the space.
Robert Hugill, Planet Hugill
Fretwork 40th Anniversary concert, Milton Court
(March 2026)
And it is true Dowland did not only wallow in gloom. He could pen a lively dance, as a handful of Galliards proved, and put musicians through their technical paces. For Forlorn Hope Fancy, the musicians tapered down to just solo lute, the wondrous Elizabeth Kenny, who led us through the demanding chromatic labyrinth in spellbinding fashion.
Rebecca Franks, The Times
‘Songs and Sonnets’ with Mark Padmore, Shakespeare in Music Festival
(May 2025)
It was a remarkable experience… There were all kings of treasures in this recital. I was unaware, for example of the settings of the sonnets by the Early of Essex where he expressed all his frustrations with Queen Elizabeth. This was a stunning concert performed by world class artists. Amazing to be able to hear them in Holy Trinity Church.
Peter Buckroyd, Stratford-upon-Avon Herald
‘I never laid eyes on Aeneas …’ Women’s Stories from the Ancient World
Britten Studio, Britten Pears Arts (August 2024)
Kenny on every word of [Nardus] Williams’s, though a technical master in her own right, maintaining an artistic balance throughout the evening…The mood transformed with Purcell’s ‘Nymphs and Shepherds’ and his brother Daniel Purcell’s ‘When Daphne first her Shepherd Saw’. Masterfully navigated, these faster-paced, more light-hearted pieces suited Williams’s agile voice with the Kenny/Williams synergy at its finest… It’s a new, wide perspective of opera and history's women and one for which [Mary] Beard, Williams and Kenny bring inclusivity, vibrancy, passion and humour.
Hattie Butterworth, Opera Now****
De Pasión Mortal - Songs from Two Golden Ages
Linn CKD746 (July 2024)
Toby Carr (modern and baroque guitars and theorbo) and Elizabeth Kenny (archlute, baroque guitar and theorbo) transcend stylistic categories to bring surprising colours, expressive textures and a wistful intimacy to the songs, whether solo or together.
William Yeoman, Gramophone
Kenny and Carr are most beguiling… In the domestic sacred song ‘In the black dungeon of despair’, in which a man awaits God’s final judgement, the partnership between Mulroy and Kenny is most stylish. Two of the three instrumental tracks are by Purcell, of which Kenny’s suite from The Fairy Queen entices with its improvisatory nature.
Ingrid Pearson, BBC Music Magazine*****
'In the Shadow of the Tower' with Nardus Williams, Spitalfields Music Festival
(June 2024)
…uber-lutenist Elizabeth Kenny… Kenny’s brief solo turns poured like liquid, musical lines barely troubled by the percussive quality of plucking… Switching mid-set to the larger, richer theorbo, Kenny illuminated significant elements of dense textures with unhurried virtuosity.
Flora Willson, The Guardian****
Elizabeth Kenny’s programme note wove it all together brilliantly; we could have heard even more of her talking during the concert.
David Nice, The Arts Desk
‘Drammi in Musica: Virtuoso Songs from 17th Century Italy’ with Nardus Williams
Wigmore Hall (January 2024)
Elizabeth Kenny’s delicately dazzling theorbo… Williams’s vocal dexterity and emotional finesse turned the singer’s sorrow into the listener’s joy – as did Kenny’s ravishing accompaniments, punctuated by a couple of brief explanatory talks… Kenny made us hear how the old bass lute blossomed in Baroque Italy into a virtuoso vehicle, not simply as a wandering counterpoint to Williams’s voice but with a couple of solo excursions of her own: an almost flamenco-like toccata by Piccinini, and a dance by the Austro-Italian Kapsberger that brought Michael Praetorius delightfully to mind.
Boyd Tonkin, The Arts Desk*****
'Baroque' with the Benedetti Baroque Orchestra, Battersea Arts Centre / Edinburgh International Festival
(July & August 2021)
…every triumph of Benedetti was matched by the triumphs of her eight specialist colleagues, all experts in performing baroque music with flair and enjoyment while avoiding stylistic extremes. My special joy was Elizabeth Kenny, queen of the guitar and that overgrown lute, the theorbo, enthusiastically thrumming at impossible speeds.
Geoff Brown, The Times****
The necessity for amplification in the Festival’s temporary substitute for the Usher Hall has created some difficulties at other concerts, but Benedetti Baroque made it work to their advantage. In an entirely acoustic setting, harpsichord and lute or theorbo can often be too quiet to be fully appreciated, while here Steven Devine, and particularly lutenist Elizabeth Kenny provided a crucial rhythmic ingredient from the opening performance of Geminiani’s somewhat relentless La Folia.
Keith Bruce, The Herald Scotland****
Recital with Iestyn Davies, Wigmore Hall
(June 2020)
It was in Kenny’s solo arrangement for theorbo of Sefauchi’s Farewell, however, that the most virtuosic music of this section [Purcell] was heard… In another solo, Kenny unwound Robert Johnson’s Fantasia with languid elegance… Escape came at last in the honeyed reverie of the spellbinding encore, Handel’s Hide me from day’s garish eye.
Neil Fisher, The Times*****
The underlying sadness of Dowland’s songs, meanwhile, can spill into his instrumental pieces, and Kenny’s performance of his The King of Denmark’s Galliard captured the ambivalence of music that reflects even as it dances. Keenly alert to shifts in mood and meaning as an accompanist, and ceaselessly engaging in her solos, she played with beautifully understated dexterity throughout.
Tim Ashley, The Guardian****
Kenny’s own arrangement of keyboard work "Stefauchi’s Farewell" was witty and light while "Lilliburlero" cheered with a gentle sway… Kenny’s solo performance of Johnson's Fantasia was intricate and compelling, with delicately measured rubato, and Dowland’s "The King of Denmark, his Galliard" had a beautifully refined rusticity.
Miranda Heggie, The Arts Desk****
'By beauteous softness mixed with majesty’, from the first birthday Ode, offered more delicate, muted reflections, Kenny’s lute spinning a translucent spider’s web of interlocking voices… Kenny closed the Purcell sequence with her own arrangements of a brusque Rigadoon, a contemplative Farewell and a nonchalant ‘Lillibulero’, her playing always lucid and tender as she stroked and plucked her beautiful theorbo’s strings with care and understanding, nurturing Purcell’s music into being…
Claire Seymour, Opera Today
The combination of the countertenor voice and the lute is a very special one, the sweetness of one melding with the astringency of the other, and Davies and Elizabeth Kenny blended exquisitely here [Purcell]… Kenny’s arrangements of three of Purcell’s short pieces displayed the agility and versatility of the lute in such expert hands…
Melanie Eskenazi, MusicOMH*****
Theorbo Fantasy, Cleveland International Classical Guitar Festival
(June 2019)
In the hands of Kenny these images became as real as if a theatrical production were taking place onstage beside her… Kenny’s playing of both his [Piccinini’s] Partite variate sopra la Folia and Ciaconna was simply magical… Kenny’s abundant technique and keen musical sensibilities were front and center during Hieronymus Kapsberger’s Toccata, Passacaglia, Capona, Canario, and Colascione. Defined by sudden shifts of mood and virtuosic melodic lines, the work ends with a hit of Turkish exoticism. Music from the French Baroque — Robert de Visée’s Suite in c, Prelude, Les Sylvains de M’Couperin, and Chaconne — rounded out the program. The theorbist relished every moment of these charming pieces. Throughout the afternoon, Kenny supplied the perfect amount of informative commentary as she explained the evolution of the theorbo and its complicated tuning system.
Mike Telin, ClevelandClassical.com
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'Trials & Tribulations' - with Zoë Brookshaw (soprano)
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'La Virtuosissima Cantatrice' - with Nardus Williams (soprano)
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'Heroines' - with Monica Piccinini (soprano)
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'Cubaroque: Beyond the Song/Más allá de la Canción' - with Nicholas Mulroy (tenor)
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'A Shakespeare Miscellany' - with Robin Blaze (countertenor)
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'Time after Time' - with James Gilchrist (tenor)
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'Ars Longa – Old and new music for theorbo' (Solo)
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