Alexi Kenney

Violin

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VIVO: Next Fellow

Violinist Alexi Kenney is forging 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, and collaborating with some of the most celebrated artists and musicians of our time. Alexi is the recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant and a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award.

Alexi has performed as soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra, the San Francisco, Dallas, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and San Diego symphonies, l'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Gulbenkian Orchestra, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. This season, he plays the complete violin sonatas of Robert Schumann with Amy Yang on period instruments at the Frick Collection, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, and the Phillips Collection. He continues to tour his project Shifting Ground in collaboration with the new media artist Xuan, which intersperses works for solo violin by J.S. Bach with pieces by Matthew Burtner, Mario Davidovsky, Salina Fisher, Nicola Matteis, Angélica Negrón, and Paul Wiancko.

Alexi is a founding member of the two-cello quartet Owls, hailed as a "dream group" by The New York Times, alongside violist Ayane Kozasa, cellist Gabe Cabezas, and cellist-composer Paul Wiancko. He regularly performs at chamber music festivals including Caramoor, ChamberFest Cleveland, Chamber Music Northwest, La Jolla, Ojai, Marlboro, Music@Menlo, Ravinia, Seattle, and Spoleto. He is an alum of the Bowers Program at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.

Born in Palo Alto, California in 1994, Alexi is a graduate of the New England Conservatory in Boston, where he studied with Donald Weilerstein and Miriam Fried. Previous teachers in the Bay Area include Wei He, Jenny Rudin, and Natasha Fong. He plays a violin made in London by Stefan-Peter Greiner in 2009 and a bow made in Port Townsend, WA by Charles Espey in 2024.

Outside of music, Alexi enjoys searching for great food and coffee, baking for friends, and walking for miles on end in whichever city he finds himself, listening to podcasts and Bach on repeat.

ARTIST'S VIVO CONCERTS