Jonathan Kenny

Jonathan Peter Kenny is from Liverpool, and has worked at the RCM since 2006.  He is Baroque Specialist at the RCM Opera Studio.  

Jonathan is from Liverpool where he was a chorister at the Metropolitan Cathedral. He read Music at the University of Exeter and studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Ellis Keeler and James Bowman. Subsequently he sang with leading professional ensembles, including Monteverdi Choir, Gabrieli Consort, Taverner Consort, La Chapelle Royale Paris and Collegium Vocale Gent before embarking on a successful career as a soloist with international opera companies and orchestras and with many of the world’s leading conductors and directors.  

In a varied career, he sang music from Machaut to the present day, performing in 14 Handel operas and 13 oratorios, as well as creating roles for Michael Nyman, Jonathan Dove, Pawel Mykietyn, Fabio Vacchi, Thomas Adès, Krzysztof Penderecki, Deidre Gribbin, John Tavener, Jocelyn Pook and Roxanna Panufnik.  He has sung for the Royal Opera Covent Garden, Glyndebourne Festival, English National Opera, English Touring Opera, Scottish Opera, Teatro comunale di Bologna, Royal Opera Copenhagen, Salzburg Festival, Halle Festival, Badische Staatstheater Karlsruhe, BBC Proms, Glimmerglass New York, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Teatr Wielki Warsaw, Opera du Rhin; with the Academy of Ancient Music, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Ulster Orchestra, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, English Baroque Soloists, Gabrieli Consort, English Concert, Ulster Orchestra, Opera du Rhin, Teatr Wielki Warsaw, Ensemble Modern Frankfurt, under conductors Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Ivan Fischer, Antoni Wit, Thierry Fischer, Andrew Parrott, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Emmanuelle Haim, Harry Bicket.

In 2005, Jonathan began a parallel career as a conductor making his debut with a staging of Pergolesi Stabat Mater in a slate quarry on Valentia Island with artist Dorothy Cross. Since then he has conducted more than a dozen operas by Handel in multiple productions in UK, Italy and Netherlands, as well as operas by Monteverdi, Cavalli, Gluck, Graun, Mozart, Rossini (including the first performance in modern times of Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims on period instruments), and dramatic presentations of  Bach’s Johannes-Passion, H moll Messe and Matthäus-Passion,all around the UK.  In 2018, he conducted the world premiere of Jocelyn Pook and Alice Oswald’s large scale oratorio Memorial at the Adelaide Festival, Brisbane Festival, and London Barbican.

Jonathan is the founder director of the period instrument orchestra Old Street Band, for many years a partner orchestra with English Touring Opera. His performing edition of Tamerlano has been performed in Dublin, London, Melbourne, Lisbon and Prague.

Faculties / departments: Vocal Studies

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