Alexi Kenney, Violin
The recipient of a 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2020 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, violinist Alexi Kenney is building a career that defies categorization, following his interests, intuition and heart. He is equally at home creating experimental programs and commissioning new works, soloing with major orchestras in the U.S. and abroad, and collaborating with some of the most celebrated musicians of our time. Alexi has performed as a soloist with orchestras such as the Detroit Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Indianapolis Symphony, Sarasota Orchestra, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, and in a play-conduct role as guest leader of both the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony. He has played recitals at Wigmore Hall, in Carnegie Hall’s “Distinctive Debuts” series, at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Phillips Collection, Mecklenberg-Vorpommern Festival and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Winner of the 2013 Concert Artists Guild Competition and laureate of the 2012 Menuhin Competition, Alexi has been profiled by Musical America, Strings magazine and The New York Times, and has written for The Strad. In April 2021, Alexi released his first recording, Paul Wiancko’s X Suite for Solo Violin, accompanied by a visual album that pairs each of the seven movements with seven contemporary sculptures, filmed on location at the Donum Estate in Sonoma, California. Chamber music continues to be a major focus of Alexi’s life. He has performed at festivals including Marlboro, La Jolla, Bridgehampton, Caramoor, ChamberFest Cleveland, Festival Napa Valley, Kronberg, the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, Music@Menlo, Open Chamber Music at Prussia Cove, Ravinia and Yellow Barn. He is a member of The Bowers Program at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (formerly CMS 2). Born in Palo Alto, California in 1994, Alexi is a graduate of the New England Conservatory in Boston, where he received his Artist Diploma and BM under the tutelage of Donald Weilerstein and Miriam Fried. Previous teachers include Wei He, Jenny Rudin and Natasha Fong. He plays a violin made in London by Stefan-Peter Greiner in 2009. Outside of music, Alexi enjoys hojicha, Bauhaus interiors, baking for friends (his specialty is this lumberjack cake), and walking for miles on end in whichever city he finds himself, listening to podcasts and Bach on repeat.