Nigel Kennedy (Violin soloist)
Nigel Kennedy (born 28 December 1956) is a British-born violinist and
violist. He made his early career in the classical field, and he has performed
and recorded most of the major violin concerti. He later included jazz, klezmer,
and other genres in his repertoire.
Nigel Kennedy's grandfather was Lauri Kennedy, a British-born musician and
principal cellist with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, who played with Fritz
Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz, Arthur Rubinstein, and others. His grandmother was
Dorothy Kennedy, a pianist, who accompanied John McCormack and taught Enrico
Caruso's children. Lauri and Dorothy settled in Australia, where their son, the
cellist John Kennedy, was born. At the age of 24, John moved to England and
joined the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, later becoming the principal
cellist of Sir Thomas Beecham's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. While in England,
John developed a relationship with an English pianist, Scylla Stoner, with whom
he eventually toured in 1952 as part of the Llewellyn-Kennedy Piano Trio (with
the violinist Ernest Llewellyn; Stoner was billed as "Scylla Kennedy" although
she and John never married). However, John ultimately left Stoner and returned
to Australia, unaware she was pregnant by him. John remained unaware of the
existence of his son, Nigel Kennedy, until they met for the first time when
Nigel was 11. Nigel Kennedy has about 30 close relatives in Australia, whom he
visits whenever he tours there.
Nigel Kennedy was born in Brighton, East Sussex. A boy prodigy, as a
10-year-old he would pick out Fats Waller tunes on the piano after hearing his
stepfather's jazz records. He was a pupil at the Yehudi Menuhin School of Music,
and later studied at the Juilliard School in New York with Dorothy
DeLay.
At the age of 16, Kennedy was invited by Stйphane Grappelli to
appear with him at New York's Carnegie Hall, under the threat from his teachers
at the Juilliard that it would ruin his classical career. He made his recording
debut in 1984 with Elgar's Violin Concerto. Kennedy's recording of Vivaldi's The
Four Seasons with the English Chamber Orchestra in 1989 sold over 2 million
copies and earned a place as one of the best-selling classical works ever. The
album remained top of the UK classical charts for over a year with sales
equivalent to one copy sold every 30 seconds.
He gave numerous performances for The Prince's Trust, the Royal Variety
Performance and private performances at St. James's Palace and Buckingham
Palace. He released his biography Always Playing in 1991. He then took the
controversial and highly publicised decision to withdraw completely from public
performance, at which point he made the album Music In Color with Stephen Duffy.
He made a triumphant return to the international concert platform to critical
acclaim five years later. In 1997, Kennedy received an award for Outstanding
Contribution to British Music at the BRIT Awards, and in 2001 received the 'Male
Artist of the Year' award.
Kennedy recorded a cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Fire" for the 1993 album Stone
Free: A Tribute to Jimi Hendrix. In 1999 Sony Classical released The Kennedy
Experience, which featured improvisational recordings of Hendrix compositions.
According to a BBC interview with Kennedy, the violinist stated that the
recording is "an album of music inspired by Jimi Hendrix. It is an extended
instrumental work in six movements, each movement a classical interpretation of
a Hendrix song". On the recording, Kennedy is accompanied by seven other
musicians, and the lineup includes two cellos, an oboe, two guitars, a Dobro,
flute, and double bass. With cellist Lynn Harrell, he has recorded an album of
duets.
In 2000, he has recorded Riders on the Storm: The Doors Concerto (with Jaz
Coleman), a violin based orchestral version of many Doors songs, including
"Strange Days", "LA Woman", "The End", and "Riders On The Storm". And, on 27
November, Kennedy joined rock group The Who at the Royal Albert Hall to play the
violin solo on the song "Baba O'Riley", released three years later on the album
Live at the Royal Albert Hall. Kennedy has played on several tracks by British
singer/songwriter Kate Bush, who was a guest on Kennedy's episode of This Is
Your Life. He was featured on two of Sarah Brightman's songs for her 2003 album
Harem.
He has been exploring Klezmer music with the Polish jazz band Kroke. The band
consists of musicians "who have been knocking around with Kennedy for five
years. ... [Kennedy explains], 'I met them all separately at jam sessions in the
jazz club near where I live in Cracow, ... I thought: that’s the drummer I want,
that’s the bass player, and so on. They’ve all got their own projects.'"
In late 2005, Kennedy went to New York to record his first album for the jazz
label Blue Note Sessions. Other musicians on the album were Ron Carter on double
bass, Jack DeJohnette on drums; and saxophonist Joe Lovano. Kennedy has since
stated that "from now on, at least 50 per cent of my endeavour is going to be in
the jazz field".
Kennedy appointed a new manager, Terri Robson,[citation
needed] and returned to the Proms after an absence of 21 years,
performing Elgar's Violin Concerto and a late-night Prom with the Nigel Kennedy
Quintet.
He also plays the viola, and has recorded Sir William Walton's Viola
Concerto.
In 1991, he was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Letters) by the
University of Bath.
Kennedy's persona is seen by some as abrasive and limiting to his career,
citing as an example his use of a 'Mockney' accent instead of the Received
Pronunciation he had when he was interviewed as a child in 1964 on the BBC's
Town and Around.
Kennedy was attacked for his approach to classical music by John Drummond in
1991, who called him "a Liberace for the Nineties" and criticised his "ludicrous
clothes and grotesque, self-invented accent."
Until 2006 he had expressed his intention of not appearing on the classical
London concert scene with a London orchestra, seen by some as arrogance and
stated by Kennedy in terms of frustrated perfectionism: "It all comes down to
the amount of rehearsal you get, or don't get, in this country. I insist on
three or four sessions prior to a concert, and orchestral administrators won't
accommodate that. If I didn't care about getting it right I could do three
concerts in the same amount of time and earn three times the money. But you
can't do something properly in less time than it takes."
Kennedy expresses a preference for the immediate appeal of live performance,
and often records entire works or movements in single 'takes' to preserve this
sense in his recordings. He also introduces improvisatory elements in his
performances, as in his Jimi Hendrix-inspired cadenza to the Beethoven Violin
Concerto and his jazz and fusion recordings.
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