Alexi Kenney, violin

The recipient of a 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2020 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, 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 USA and abroad, and collaborating with some of the most celebrated musicians of our time.

Recent and upcoming concerts include performances as soloist with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, 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 the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. He has played recitals at Wigmore Hall, on Carnegie Hall’s ‘Distinctive Debuts’ series, at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Phillips Collection, 92nd Street Y, 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 paired each of the seven movements of X Suite 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, performing at festivals including Marlboro, Ojai, La Jolla, Bridgehampton, Caramoor, ChamberFest Cleveland, Festival Napa Valley, Kronberg, the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, Music@Menlo, and Ravinia, as well as with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York.

Born in Palo Alto, California in 1994, Alexi is a graduate of the New England Conservatory in Boston, where he received his Artist Diploma as a student of Miriam Fried and Donald Weilerstein. Previous teachers include Wei He, Jenny Rudin, and Natasha Fong. He plays a violin made in London by Stefan-Peter Greiner in 2009 and a bow by François-Nicolas Voirin.

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.