Name: Alexi Kenney, Violin
Start: 2023-02-16T19:30:00
Location: Richardson Auditorium

Alexi Kenney

Princeton University Concerts

Princeton University Music Department

19th-century composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov once said that “all modern music owes everything to J. S. Bach.” In the hands of 28-year-old trailblazing violinist Alexi Kenney, the recipient of a 2016 Avery Fisher Career Grant and 2020 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, this concept takes on an extended timelessness within the framework of 21st-century music. The spiritual overtones of Bach’s music transform within the echoes of chanting monks incorporated into Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Du Yun’s recent work for violin and tape; Bach’s ability to speak to the universality of grief deepens the poignancy of Matthew Burtner’s musical meditation on climate change and the future of life on our planet. As Mr. Kenney thoughtfully shares: “my hope is that through the course of the program, each piece enlivens those around it, framing Bach in a new light and placing contemporary violin works in context—and showing that art need not be defined by era to express our shared humanity.”