Kenny celebrates Dowland year
Southampton's Head of Early Music Elizabeth Kenny is at the centre of 2013 celebrations of the 450th anniversary of the birth of John Dowland, England's greatest lute player and composer.
The year started with a roundup of recordings for BBC Radio 3's 'Building a Library', in which Kenny's recording of lute songs with tenor Mark Padmore and guitarist Craig Ogdon was rated the best song collection. The Independent on Sunday captured the spirit of responses to the CD, stating that no other was "as radical in its potential impact on our understanding of the music". Kenny's group Theatre of The Ayre have two Dowland-themed programmes touring many venues from Edinburgh to London, "Anniversary Collection" and "Ayres and Dialogues". She will tour the UK and USA with viol consort Fretwork, performing Dowland's epic journey of melancholy for lute and viols, Lachrymae , and will give solo recitals of his lute music in venues as far afield as Boston USA. She is guest editor for a special May 2013 Dowland-themed edition of the Oxford University Press journal Early Music, to which she invited both distinguished players and scholars to contribute. Further appearances will include conferences and performances in Cambridge and at the York Early Music Festival, where she is one of the artistic advisors until 2014.
