Nigel Kennedy

Nigel Kennedy (1956- ), British concert violinist. One of the leading classical musicians in the country, Kennedy has done much to raise the popular profile of classical music in Great Britain.

Born in Brighton, Kennedy studied music (initially the piano) at the Yehudi Menuhin School and, from 1972, the Juilliard School of Performing Arts in New York. He made his debut with the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall in London (1977), and has toured the world with the BBC Symphony and Hallé orchestras. His performances of the Elgar and Mendelssohn concertos are particularly admired, although the media tend to focus on his informality in interviews and for the casual clothes he wears to perform. Together with his interest in more contemporary forms of music (he has regularly played jazz with Stephane Grappelli, including concerts at the Edinburgh Festival in 1974 and the Carnegie Hall in 1976), Kennedy's unorthodoxy has given his work huge popular appeal. He won a Golden Rose of Montreux (1990) for a television recording of Vivaldi's Four Seasons (the album was No.1 in the United Kingdom Classical Chart for over a year).

Kennedy withdrew from the public eye in 1992, but made a successful return to concert performance in 1997, dropping the use of his first name and styling himself simply 'Kennedy'. Since then he has recorded and toured with major European orchestras, in particular the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, with whose members he also undertook a major Bach tour and recording project in 2000, to mark the 250th anniversary of Bach's death. He returned to familiar ground in 2002 with performances and a recording of Vivaldi concertos. Since 2000, Kennedy has appeared sporadically as a guest performer with the Polish klezmer band Kroke: an album, East Meets East, was released in 2003. Other projects have included interpretations of rock music by Jimi Hendrix and The Doors, as well as a jazz album, The Blue Note Sessions (2006). He has been Senior Vice-President of Aston Villa football club since 1990, and in 1991 published Always Playing, his autobiography.