Sir Nicholas Roger Kenyon, CBE (born 23 February 1951, Cheshire), is a British music administrator, editor and writer on music.
Responsible for the BBC Proms 1996–2007, he was then appointed Managing Director of the Barbican Centre, before stepping down in September 2021 to become opera critic of The Telegraph and a Visiting Scholar in the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge.
Educated at St Bede's College, Manchester, Kenyon played bassoon with Stockport Youth Orchestra, before going up to read history at Balliol College, Oxford.
After university, he worked for the English Bach Festival, and as a freelance writer on music. From 1979 to 1982 he was a music critic for The New Yorker . He then returned to the UK as the music critic for The Times , then chief music critic of The Observer . He was music editor of The Listener and editor of the journal Early Music .
In 1992, he was appointed Controller, BBC Radio 3 and Director of the BBC Proms from the 1996 season, his title changing in 2000 to Controller BBC Proms, Live Events and Television Classical Music. In February 2007 he was announced as the new managing director of the Barbican Centre in the City of London, in succession to Sir John Tusa, a post he took up in October 2007, remaining until September 2021, when he became opera critic of the Telegraph and a Visiting Scholar at the Faculty of Music of Cambridge University.
Kenyon has been a member of the Board of Arts Council England, and previously of the Board of English National Opera, a Governor of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, a member of the Arts and Humanities Research Council, a member of English Heritage's Blue Plaques Panel, a Trustee of the Dartington Hall Trust, a member of the Dartington International Summer School Foundation and a Patron of Spode Music Week. [1] He is also a Fellow of the Radio Academy (FRA). [2]
Appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2001 New Year Honours, for services to music and millennium broadcasting, [3] he was promoted Knight Bachelor in the 2008 New Year Honours. [4]
Awarded the President's Medal by the British Academy in 2011, [5] Sir Nicholas is a member of the Worshipful Company of Musicians. [6]
Amongst Kenyon's publications are The BBC Symphony Orchestra: the first 50 years (1982), the biography Simon Rattle: from Birmingham to Berlin (2001), and the Faber Pocket Guide to Mozart (2005) and Faber Pocket Guide to Bach (2011). He edited the influential Authenticity and Early Music (1987), and the BBC Proms Guides to Great Symphonies, Great Concertos, Great Choral Works and Great Orchestral works. In 2021 he published The Life of Music: New Adventures in the Western Classical Tradition (2021).
In 2020 Kenyon commented on a controversy about whether Rule, Britannia! should be sung at the Last Night of the Proms. In recent years the inclusion of the song has been criticised because of its jingoistic words, for example by Leonard Slatkin, the second non-British person to conduct the Last Night of the Proms. [7] In 2020 the BBC proposed to perform the music in the Royal Albert Hall without the words, citing the difficulties the traditional arrangement posed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Kenyon dismissed the criticism of this decision as "kneejerk" BBC bashing. [8] In the end, there was a u-turn and the lyrics were sung after all. [9]
The BBC Symphony Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. Founded in 1930, it was the first permanent salaried orchestra in London, and is the only one of the city's five major symphony orchestras not to be self-governing. The BBC SO is the principal broadcast orchestra of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
The BBC Proms is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in central London. Robert Newman founded The Proms in 1895. Since 1927, the BBC has organised and broadcast The Proms. Each season consists of concerts in the Royal Albert Hall, chamber music concerts at Cadogan Hall, additional Proms in the Park events across the UK on the Last Night of the Proms, and associated educational and children's events. The season is a significant event in British culture and in classical music. Czech conductor Jiří Bělohlávek described the Proms as "the world's largest and most democratic musical festival".
Sir Henry Joseph Wood was an English conductor best known for his association with London's annual series of promenade concerts, known as the Proms. He conducted them for nearly half a century, introducing hundreds of new works to British audiences. After his death, the concerts were officially renamed in his honour as the "Henry Wood Promenade Concerts", although they continued to be generally referred to as "the Proms".
Sir Colin Rex Davis was an English conductor, known for his association with the London Symphony Orchestra, having first conducted it in 1959. His repertoire was broad, but among the composers with whom he was particularly associated were Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Sibelius, Stravinsky and Tippett.
Sir John Eliot Gardiner is an English conductor, particularly known for his performances of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, especially the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage of 2000, performing Bach's church cantatas in liturgical order in churches all over Europe, and New York City, with the Monteverdi Choir, and recording them at the locations.
BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, drama, culture and the arts also featuring. The station has described itself as "the world's most significant commissioner of new music".
Sir Alan Charles MacLaurin Mackerras was an Australian conductor. He was an authority on the operas of Janáček and Mozart, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. He was long associated with the English National Opera and Welsh National Opera and was the first Australian chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He also specialized in Czech music as a whole, producing many recordings for the Czech label Supraphon.
Sir Roger Arthur Carver Norrington is an English conductor. He is known for historically informed performances of Baroque, Classical and Romantic music.
Joanna Clare MacGregor is a British concert pianist, conductor, composer, and festival curator. She is Head of Piano at the Royal Academy of Music and a professor of the University of London. She was artistic director of the International Summer School & Festival at Dartington Hall from 2015 to 2019.
Steven John Isserlis is a British cellist. An acclaimed soloist, chamber musician, educator, writer and broadcaster, he is widely regarded as one of the leading musicians of his generation. He is also noted for his diverse repertoire and distinctive sound which is deployed with his use of gut strings.
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010).
The BBC Symphony Chorus is a British amateur chorus based in London. It is the dedicated chorus for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, though it performs with other national and international orchestras.
Ian Charles Bostridge CBE is an English tenor, well known for his performances as an opera and lieder singer.
Robert Saxton is a British composer.
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Sir John Richard Gray Drummond was a British arts administrator who spent most of his career at the BBC. He was described by Rodney Milnes of Opera magazine as "one of the most formidable figures in the arts world of the UK for 40 years".
Sir William Frederick Glock, CBE was a British music critic and musical administrator who was instrumental in introducing the Continental avant-garde, notably promoting the career of Pierre Boulez.
Philip Turbett is a British bassoonist and clarinettist also specialising in historically informed performance.
Sir Roger William Wright CBE is an English arts administrator. He is currently the Chief Executive of Britten Pears Arts.
Richard Duncan Morrison is an English music critic who specializes in classical music. As chief music critic of The Times since 1992, he "has long been admired for his penetrating cultural column". He also writes for the monthly publication BBC Music Magazine and has previously written for Classical Music, The Listener and the Early Music journal. In 2004, he published a history of the London Symphony Orchestra entitled Orchestra: The LSO: A Century of Triumph and Turbulence; Charlotte Higgins of The Guardian described it as "a pungent, immensely readable first book."
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