Kenneth Weiss

Territory represented: Canada

Kenneth Weiss was born in New York City where he graduated from the High School of Performing Arts. He received a Bachelors of Music degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (USA) and continued his studies with Gustav Leonhardt at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam.

From 1990 to 1993 Kenneth Weiss was Musical Assistant to William Christie at Les Arts Florissants, participating in numerous opera productions and recordings. He has since focused on harpsichord recitals and Baroque chamber music performing in numerous festivals and concerts halls around the world. In 2006 he gave recitals in Nüremburg, Montpellier, Barcelona, Dijon, Geneva, Antwerp and at the Cité de la musique in Paris. Among his 2007 recitals there are invitations to Madrid, La Roque d’Anthéron, Santander, Barcelona and San Sebastian.

Kenneth Weiss performs as a soloist with Europa Galante, direction Fabio Biondi, and the Collegium Vocal de Gent directed by Philippe Herreweghe, and since 2005 has been giving Bach recitals with Fabio Biondi, including concerts at the Aix en Provence Festival and the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris.

In collaboration with the choreographer Trisha Brown, Kenneth Weiss is musical director of M.O., a ballet on Bach’s Musical Offering, first performed at La Monnaie in Brussels. In May 1999 he was invited by William Christie to conduct Les Arts Florissants in Doux Mensonges by the choreographer Jiri Kylian at the Paris Opera, a production which has since been revived in March 2001 and February 2004. Kenneth Weiss is also co-director with William Christie of Les Arts Florissants’ Jardin des Voix programme.

In December 2004 Kenneth Weiss was musical director of the Aix en Provence European Music Academy’s staged production of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas which was revived in the Aix en Provence Festival in July 2006. In January 2006 he conducted the Orchestre National des Pays de Loire in a programme of Handel’s Water Music and Royal Fireworks Music at the Nantes ‘Folle Journée’ festival. In 2007 he conducted the Orchestre de l’Opéra de Rouen, the orchestra of the Aix-en-Provence European Music Academy on tour in Spain, and the Orchestre des Pays de Savoie. He was reinvited by the Aix European Music Academy to direct a new Monteverdi madrigal staged production based around the Combatimento for the 2007 Festival. In 2008 Kenneth Weiss directs revivals of both the Aix productions - Dido & Aeneas and the Combatimento - in the Lille, Bordeaux and Monte Carlo operas; a Handel programme with The English Concert including Handel organ concertos in France and Spain, and a new staged production of two ‘Tonadillas Escenicas’, late 18th Century Spanish works by Esteve and de Laserna at the Almagro festival near Madrid.

In 1995 Kenneth Weiss’s recording of the Goldberg Variations for Empreinte Digitale was acclaimed by Répertoire as “an astonishing and one of the most intelligent recordings (of the Golbergs), to be placed next to those of Leonhardt and Verlet”. In a review of his recording of Bach’s Partitas, released in 2001 on the Satirino Records label, the French newspaper Le Monde wrote that Kenneth Weiss “has produced a masterpiece… His calm, composed and subtle approach to these dance suites is magnificently noble.” His recording of Scarlatti sonatas, also for Satirino Records, has been equally well received, Gramophone writing “…superbly played at well-judged tempi, and recorded with lucid clarity”. A further recording of Rameau Opera and Ballet transcriptions, coprduced with the Cité de la musique and recorded on two of the historical instruments in the Musée de la musique, was released in December 2003: “Jean-Philippe Rameau crackles under Kenneth Weiss’s fingers. These operas and ballet transcriptions of the genius of Dijon are a true delight to the senses” (Le Figaro). In April 2006, his recording of Bach’s Italian Concerto, the French Overture and the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue for Satirino Records, also in collaboration with the Cité de la musique, was greeted in these terms by À nous Paris: “Quite apart from his impeccable finger technique, Kenneth Weiss seems to be at the height of maturity, revealing a musical discours in which inspiration rivals elegance.”

Kenneth Weiss’s most recent recording, Scarlatti’s ‘Essercizi per gravicembalo’ also for the Satirino label and coproduced with the Madrid Caja Bank’s Spanish music label Los SIGLOS de ORO, was released in the November 2007. He recorded the Goldberg Variations live at a recital at the Théâtre St Louis in Pau, France, on October 12th 2008 which will be released by Satirino records in 2009.

Kenneth Weiss teaches at the Paris Conservatory and has recently been appointed harpsichord professor at the Juilliard School of Music in New York.

> his website