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Henry Kennedy
General Management
British-Canadian conductor Henry Kennedy was appointed first Resident Conductor at the National Arts Center Orchestra, Ottawa, from the 2024/5 season - a position he will continue for at least two seasons. This season he conducted a highly successful new production of Tosca in Lucca with the Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini, which was founded 20 years ago by Riccardo Muti. There are futher performances scheduled in Pisa, Livorno and Ravenna.
Henry Kennedy completed his one-year tenure as Conductor of Wroclaw Opera where he led a number of productions during the 2022/2023 season including Don Giovanni, Carmen and Les Pêcheurs de Perles.
Since 2017, Henry has been Founder and Music Director of the Resonate Symphony Orchestra. As Music Director, he curated and conducted a number of diverse programmes in some of London’s most prominent concert halls. Upcoming debuts include with the Warsaw Radio Orchestra and Chelsea Opera Group.
Last summer, Henry was Assistant Conductor to Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique for Berlioz’s Les Troyens. Other highlights as Assistant Conductor include when Henry worked with Bassem Akiki in 2022 for the World Premiere of Philippe Boesmans’ final opera On purge bébé at The Royal Theatre of La Monnaie, Brussels. In orchestral repertoire he has assisted conductors such as Marin Alsop, Sir Mark Elder, Edward Gardner, Hannu Lintu, Sir Simon Rattle, Jukka Pekka Saraste, Thomas Sondergard and John Wilson with some of the world’s leading symphony orchestras.
In 2021, Henry was chosen by Riccardo Muti (as one of five conductors) to participate in the “Riccardo Muti Italian Opera Academy” studying Nabucco. Directly following this, he was asked to replace Riccardo Muti for excerpts of Nabucco in concert performances in the theatres of Rimini and Ravenna.
Henry studied conducting at the Royal Academy of Music, London where he graduated with Distinction.
Selected reviews
“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
Photographs
