JOHN KENNEDY
Conducting and Artistic Leadership
“A brilliant, clear account of the harmonically attractive, rhythmically complex score under contemporary music expert John Kennedy... Kennedy's work and that of his musicians was superb.”
Opera News
"Conductor John Kennedy not only made the demanding, meticulous details of the score sound easy, but also brought forward a dense emotional richness..."
Gramophone (UK)
"His reading of Beethoven 7 had it all: carefully controlled dynamics, subtle interpretative nuance, a perfect sense of musical line, and a sure knack for unleashing the raw energy and power of his marvelous players where called for.”
Charleston City Paper
Especially noted for his conducting of emotionally-charged interpretations of contemporary opera as well as new music, John has led over 300 premieres of new work. Anchored in his commitment to exploring the diversity and possibility of what opera can be, he has led U.S. premieres of new operas by many of the leading composers of our time, working with Pascal Dusapin, Luca Francesconi, Philip Glass, Toshio Hosokawa, Helmut Lachenmann, Michael Nyman, Wolfgang Rihm, and Kaija Saariaho, in collaborations with directors including Phelim McDermott, Ong Keng Sen, Marianne Weems, and Chen Shi-Zheng.
During Kennedy’s former tenure as Director of Orchestral Activities at Spoleto Festival USA, the Spoleto Festival Orchestra developed into the most competitive summer orchestra program in the United States. Conducting it in orchestral programs of wide scope and context, his recent programs included Zemlinsky’s Lyric Symphony in a staged performance by Atom Egoyan, and U.S. premieres of works by Louis Andriessen, Philip Glass, Michael Gordon, Somei Satoh, Tyshawn Sorey, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Peteris Vasks, and many others. The festival’s culture of presenting music as a living art form with social relevance ran deep, in part thanks to John’s “Music in Time” series, which long placed the music of under-represented and young composers in the foreground, with carefully curated and contextualized programs centering musicians and audiences in hearing music experientially.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
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Creativity, Collaboration, and Care
​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Recent appearances include Omar at San Francisco Opera, the U.S. Premiere of Turnage's Coraline with West Edge Opera, and leading the South Korean premiere of Stravinsky’s complete ballet Pulcinella in a staged version in Daejeon. Kennedy has conducted some of today’s leading contemporary ensembles including Talea, Ensemble ACJW, sfSound, and Other Minds.
A hallmark of Kennedy’s work has been championing underrepresented composers and repertoire, expanding stylistic diversity in orthodoxies of tradition, and programming around social issues. Early in his career, his first curatorial project was resurrecting and bringing to public attention the music of Johanna Beyer through a multi-tiered approach of performance, recording, publishing, and musicological articles. His programming history is notable for advocating stylistic as well as gender and cultural diversity, long before these movements became more widespread.
Kennedy’s musical life has included chapters in New York, Santa Fe, the Bay Area, and now Seattle. With a deep understanding of contemporary performance practice from direct work with composers including John Cage, Helmut Lachenmann, and many others, he founded two ensembles, Essential Music (New York), and Santa Fe New Music – organizations which commissioned and premiered dozens of works. Essential Music toured worldwide and recorded extensively, performing everywhere in New York from The Kitchen to the 92nd Street Y to Lincoln Center (as a 112-musician orchestra). SFNM became a community pillar organization in Santa Fe, collaborating with many community organizations including the Santa Fe Opera, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, SITE Santa Fe, Girls Inc., and many others, while having a field-wide impact with award-winning CDs and commissions for the repertoire. SFNM established the statewide New Mexico Young Composers' Competition, had an active SFNM Youth Ensemble, and produced a youth opera involving 80 K-12 students. SFNM was awarded the Mayor’s Award in the Arts in 2010.
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Recent conversation with Dr. Julie Pham about the practice of respect in music.
