Alexi Kenney - Video

Recorded using part of Alexi Kenney’s BBT Award 2020 and including two BBT commissions, Shifting Ground – released on Bright Shiny Things on 7 June 2024 – is Alexi’s love letter to Bach, with solo Bach works cheek-by-jowl with modern works and new commissions.  This is the opening track, Bach’s Violin Sonata No 1 in G minor BWV 1001, the first movement, Adagio. The album ends full circle in the epic Chaconne that ends Bach’s Second Partita in D minor BWV 1004, in between encompassing 20th and  21st-century works including two BBT commissions, by Angélica Negrón and Salina Fisher, as seen at BBT’s 20th birthday anniversary celebrations at London’s Wigmore Hall in June 2023.

Recorded using part of Alexi Kenney’s BBT Award 2020 and including two BBT commissions, Shifting Ground – released on Bright Shiny Things on 7 June 2024 – is Alexi’s love letter to Bach, with solo Bach works cheek-by-jowl with modern works and new commissions.  Here is Alexi’s own transcription of Ariane Grande’s thank you.next.

The first concert of BBT’s 20th anniversary celebrations at Wigmore Hall in June 2023 ended with this performance of Stravinsky’s Suite from The Soldier’s Tale for violin, clarinet and piano, performed by Alexi Kenney, Mark Simpson and Filippo Gorini, respectively. Join them – and the solider, the devil and the princess – in this masterly performance.

Alexi Kenney’s second BBT Commission – of which he gave the European première at London’s Wigmore Hall as part of BBT’s 20th anniversary celebrations in June 2023 – was Salina Fisher’s Hikari, which will be included in Alexi’s forthcoming Shifting Ground recording. Salina Fisher had flown in from her native New Zealand to be with us for the weekend and takes her bow at the end of Alexi’s performance.

Violinist Alexi Kenney performed two European premières at BBT’s 20th anniversary celebrations at London’s Wigmore Hall in June 2023. Both were BBT commissions that Alexi had chosen for his forthcoming Shifting Ground recording and here he plays Angélica Negrón’s The Violinist for violin and electronics. Ana Fabrega’s short story about a non-musician’s nightmare waking up to find herself on Carnegie Hall’s stage about to play Brahms’ Violin Concerto is given a mesmeric solo violin accompaniment which captivated Wigmore Hall’s audience.

Written for Alexi Kenney and premiered by him at London’s Wigmore Hall in 2019, Paul Wiancko’s X-Suite for Solo Violin marks Kenney’s debut recording, coupled with this simply stunning ‘Visual Album’ filmed at the Donum Estate in California, with each of the Suite’s seven pieces matched to one of the wonderful statues at the Estate, from artists such as Jeppe Hein, Gao Weigang, Jaume Plensa, Louise Bourgeois, Richard Hudson, Subodh Gupta and Doug Aitken.  Mike Grittani’s film was made in January 2021 with assistance from Alice Kao and aerial cinematography courtesy of Eric Cheng.