Professor Elizabeth Kenny 

Emeritus Professor

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I came to Southampton in 2006 as an Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts.  I'm a lute player, and my three year project was  entitled "The Lion and the Unicorn", investigating improvisation practices in vocal music in seventeenth century England.  This enabled me to get more closely involved in the Music Department, and in 2009 I became Head of Early Music and a lecturer in Music.  At half time, I combine this with continuing to play concerts and make recordings on the lute, and founded a group arising from my research, Theatre of the Ayre.

For nine years I worked with students embedding a sense of historical performance practice in the performance life of the Department: some students specialise in historical performance, (mainly at postgraduate level) but for most it will be something that underpins their choices on modern instruments, and for singers it involves exploring the stylistic opportunities each type of music presents.    Larger scale projects included Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, Blow's Venus and Adonis, Vivaldi's The four Seasons, Handel Concerti Grossi and Acis and Galatea, while smaller projects took us towards less familiar names such as Mazzocchi, Henry Lawes  and Bononcini.  Many of these were student-led or conducted, my role being to facilitate a deeper exploration of the music often from within the ensemble. I also coached chamber music with regular ensembles, taught continuo classes and performance and academic modules such as Performance Teaching Seminar and Seventeenth Century English Song.

My teaching work now takes me to Oxford University and the Royal Academy of Music, leaving early music at Southampton in the very capable hands of colleagues on the instrumental and academic staff.   I continue to perform in many and varied contexts on the lute, and am happy to be associated still with the Department as an Emerita.