Theatre of the Ayre is Elizabeth Kenny’s platform for bringing dramatically-minded singers and players together to create inspirational programmes of seventeenth century music. They have performed in and broadcast from major Festivals across the UK, Belgium and Germany. Always looking for innovative ways of presenting theatrical music, they created bespoke choruses of schoolchildren as Cupids during a tour of John Blow’s Venus and Adonis, a live recording of which was released on the Wigmore Live label in 2011.
Lutes&Ukes, Theatre of the Ayre’s groundbreaking collaboration with members of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, has become known to audiences including and beyond the classical, as a “genre-crashing supergroup” following tours in 2013 and 2015, the first of which saw them develop an education project involving nearly 400 ukulele-wielding children across London and York.
In 2016 Theatre of the Ayre branched out into new music, as the judges of the National Centre for Early Music’s Young Composers’ Award, championing new settings of Shakespeare and Carol-Anne Duffy for voices and lute. In 2017 they released The Masque of Moments for Linn records, a landmark programme which has converted surprising numbers of critics and audiences to the glories of the English Masque. Further recent Theatre of the Ayre performances include the Cologne Early Music Festival, (Lutes&Ukes), the MA Festival, Brugge (Venus and Adonis) and the York Early Music Festival (A quiet revolution: mid seventeenth century English vocal music).
Theatre of the Ayre likes to do things differently... Its weapons: a freshness of approach and a quasi-improvisatory freedom of delivery.
Financial Times
It's not often you witness a player attacking their instrument with a bottleneck while another strokes theirs with a quill… both created sublime musical expressions of melancholy.
The Guardian
An uncommonly well directed and documented programme, a counter-factual concert of wit, elegance, rustic bravura and nonchalant technical command.
Music Web International on The Masque of Moments
A crack-squad of top instrumentalists
Gramophone
This biography is for information only and should not be reproduced.
These photos are available to be downloaded.
Right click on a desired image and select the "Save Link As" option.
