Henry Kennedy
General Management
Dynamic young British-Canadian conductor Henry Kennedy has demonstrated his facility for moving seamlessly between the opera house and the concert stage with an impressive array of international credits. He is currently serving a two-year appointment as the inaugural Resident Conductor of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra (NACO) in Ottawa; has served as Resident Conductor for Poland’s Wrocław Opera; and conducted Riccardo Muti’s Orchestra Cherubini in a new production of Tosca in Puccini’s birthplace to celebrate the 2024 centenary of the composer’s death, when Corriere Fiorentino declared him to be “the revelation in this Tosca.” He has also collaborated as an assistant conductor with Sir Simon Rattle and Sir John Eliot Gardiner, among many other luminaries, and in 2025 was ranked by the CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster, among “30 under 30” notable Canadian classical musicians.
Kennedy is especially adept at building lasting relationships with both conductors and institutions. At the NACO he works in close collaboration with Music Director Alexander Shelley, as well as helming numerous programs of his own with the orchestra. At Poland’s Wrocław Opera he collaborated with artistic director Mariusz Kwiecień and music director Bassem Akiki, and led performances of Don Giovanni, Carmen, and Les Pêcheurs de perles. In recent seasons he has been brought back to Poland twice for productions of Pêcheurs and La bohème and will return again for Pêcheurs in 2027.
In addition to his extensive work as assistant conductor to Gardiner and Rattle across multiple orchestras, Kennedy has assumed responsibilities as assistant to Marin Alsop, Sir Mark Elder, Edward Gardner, Hannu Lintu, Jukka-Pekka Saraste, and John Storgårds. He has also enjoyed mentoring relationships – with enthusiastic ongoing support – with Christian Thielemann and Richard Bonynge, and has had an ongoing relationship with Riccardo Muti – most recently leading Muti’s Orchestra Cherubini in Tosca in 2024 – since his 2021 participation in Muti’s Italian Opera Academy, during which he was invited to substitute for Muti in two performances of Nabucco excerpts.
Kennedy graduated with Distinction and Honours from London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he studied clarinet and piano in addition to conducting.
Selected reviews
“At Muti’s urging, I attended the rehearsals and finale performances of the Kennedy-conducted Cherubini Orchestra traversals of “Tosca” last March at the historic 1852 Alighieri Theatre in Ravenna. It was fascinating to watch Kennedy, a native English speaker who was raised in the U.K. and trained in London, work in Italian with orchestra players near his own age during the dress rehearsal…” read full article here - review by Dennis Polkow in New City Music, 17th March 2026
“The most notable aspect of the production was the sense of dramatic trajectory that Kennedy was able to project through the music while still keeping the tempos admirably supple, both on the small scale and the large. Kennedy achieved a compelling transparency with these young instrumentalists that allowed the modernistic aspects of the score to shine through.” - Opera magazine review of Tosca with Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini in Lucca, November 2024
“In Generational Relay, Bright Young Maestro Takes Baton And Flies” read full article here - Interview with Matthew Gurewitsch in Classical Voice North America, December 5th 2022
“Both in the first movement and the finale codas the conductor showed a real mastery of pacing and measured crescendo. There was an underlying calm steady beat, a sensitive layering of crescendo, a sense of inexorable progress to the visionary destination. Getting these glorious perorations right is another essential to a great Bruckner performance, and Henry Kennedy knows how to do it.” - Ken Ward, Bruckner Journal, reviewing Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony with Resonate Symphony Orchestra, October 2021
“…It had immediately established the credentials not only of this fine orchestra but above all of a conductor with such fluid expressive movements who could immediately convey his overall vision to his fellow colleagues. It is rare to see such naturally expressive movements that can convey so clearly the shape and style of the mature Mozart.” - Christopher Axworthy Music Commentary, reviewing Mozart Symphony no. 36 with Resonate Symphony Orchestra, February 2020
“A sense of line and overall architectural shape that was so clearly etched. Like Jochum and the great German school the brass was allowed its just weight never overpowering the sumptuous string playing. Playing of silvery lightness that built to tumultuous ravishing fortissimi.” - Christopher Axworthy Music Commentary, reviewing Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony with Resonate Symphony Orchestra, October 2021
“The finale again demonstrated Henry Kennedy’s faultless ability to build the Bruckner Steigerungen - those gripping build-ups – to great effect, and the massive falling octave tutti in the opening paragraph was quite shattering in its power.” - Ken Ward, Bruckner Journal, reviewing Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony with Resonate Symphony Orchestra, October 2021
“Henry Kennedy should stand at the threshold of a successful, even perhaps a glittering career, and those at Smith Square on 15th June 2018 should one day be lucky enough to boast of being there” - Music Club of London
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