British-Canadian conductor Henry Kennedy was appointed first Resident Conductor of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa in July 2024. Starting in September 2024, he will conduct a number of concerts and operas throughout the next two seasons. In November 2024 he will be conducting Tosca for the 100th Anniversary of Puccini’s death in the composer’s hometown of Lucca at the Teatro del Giglio with the Orchestra Cherubini. In March 2025, he will also conduct Tosca in Livorno, Pisa and Ravenna.
Henry recently completed his one-year tenure as Conductor of Wroclaw Opera where he led a number of productions during the 2022/2023 season, debuting with Don Giovanni followed by a number of performances of Carmen and Les Pêcheurs de Perles, which he also conducted at the Silesian opera house of Bytom, Poland.
As Music Director and Founder of the Resonate Symphony Orchestra since 2017, Henry has curated and conducted a number of diverse programmes in some of London’s most prominent concert halls. The orchestra has performed a wide variety of repertoire ranging from Bach’s double piano concerti, Bruckner’s 3rd and 4th symphonies to Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony. Most recently the Orchestra opened the Deal Music & Arts Festival in Kent.
Henry has conducted a number of orchestras across Europe including most recently the Sudeten Philharmonic and Zielona Gora Philharmonics in Poland and the Brasov Philharmonic in Romania. Upcoming debuts include with the Warsaw Radio Orchestra and Chelsea Opera Group.
In 2023 Henry was Assistant Conductor to Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique for Berlioz’s monumental opera, Les Troyens. The tour included performances at the Berlioz Festival, Salzburg Festival, The Royal Opera of Versailles, Berliner Philharmonie and BBC Proms.
Other engagements as Assistant Conductor included his work with Bassem Akiki in 2022 for the World Premiere of Philippe Boesmans’ final opera On purge bébé at The Royal Theatre of La Monnaie, Brussels. In orchestral repertoire he has assisted conductors such as Marin Alsop, Sir Mark Elder, Edward Gardner, Hannu Lintu, Sir Simon Rattle, Jukka Pekka Saraste, Thomas Sondergard and John Wilson with some of the world’s leading symphony orchestras.
In 2021, Henry was chosen as one of five conductors by Riccardo Muti to participate in the “Riccardo Muti Italian Opera Academy” studying Nabucco. The Academy was held over ten days at the Prada Foundation in Milan and was filmed for Italian Television. Directly following this, he was asked to replace Riccardo Muti for excerpts of Nabucco in concert performances in the theatres of Rimini and Ravenna.
In early 2020, Henry was selected as one of eight conductors to participate in the Karajan Young Conductors Award in Salzburg, where he had the opportunity to conduct the Mozarteum Orchestra and Austrian Ensemble for New Music in the Salzburg Felsenreitschule.
Henry studied conducting at the Royal Academy of Music, London where he graduated with Distinction. He has been mentored for a number of years by Richard Bonynge, Colin Metters, Riccardo Muti, Christopher Seaman, Christian Thielemann, and David Zinman.
In his spare time, he enjoys cycling around his hometown in the Shropshire Hills and reading Russian literature.
