Kendall Kennison

Professor of Music on the Bennet-Harwood Distinguished ProfessorshipIntegrative Arts Studies, Music

Kendall Kennison is the composer of dozens of pieces including chamber music, solo, orchestral, and choral works, and a short opera. His music has been performed throughout the Northeast and Midwestern United States, as well as in Italy, England, Croatia, and Russia. He has written music at the request of performers and ensembles including Scottish Voices, pianists Lisa Weiss and Caroline Hong, guitarist Stanley Alexandrowicz, The New Horizons Chamber Ensemble, Duo Viardot, the Poulenc Trio, the Goucher Chamber Symphony, and the Goucher Opera Workshop. One of his interests is writing music inspired by visual art or literature, and this has led to collaborations with artists Allyn Massey and Bernhard Hildebrandt, as well as music inspired by painters Robert Motherwell and Richard Diebenkorn, and novelist C.P. Snow. His composition teachers include Robert Hall Lewis, Robert Moevs, Richard Wilson, and Annea Lockwood, and he is grateful to his first piano teacher, Alan D. Wingard, for introducing him to contemporary music in elementary school.

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Research, Scholarship, Creative Work in Progress

10-string Guitar piece for Stanley Alexandrowicz.

Piano album, pieces written for myself to play.

Exhibits or Performances

  • Glasovir fantasy for piano (2014) was featured on Caroline Hong’s quarantine Facebook Recital for New Music Ohio July 26, 2020. watch here.

  • Sonata for solo guitar and Backanally, Stanley Alexandrowicz, guitar at Madison Community Arts Center, Madison NJ December 8, 2019; at The 1867 Sanctuary at Ewing, Ewing, NJ, September 28, 2019, April 29, 2018 and July 6, 2017; at Goucher College March 29, 2018; at University of Wrocław, Poland December 21, 2017; at Palazzo Zacco Armeni, Padova, Italy, Nov. 3, 2016

  • White River Junction Scottish Voices, Graham Hair, director with Jacqueline Pollauf, harp at Radford University, April 10, 2019

  • String Quartet 1: Laments and Fantasies, Quartetto di Venezia at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, April 1, 2017; at West Chester University, March 28, 2017; at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church Chelsea, New York, NY, March 27, 2017; at Haverford College, March 26, 2017; at Goucher College, March 23, 2017

Conference Papers & Panel Participation

  • Keynote speaker at the American Innovators Series at Wright State University: The Music of Stuart Saunders Smith: Continuing the Transcendentalist Tradition, January, 2013.

Other Professional or Scholarly Activity

YouTube series on Voice-Leading for music theory students. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZiykyE9NZQ&list=PL_nIbt_q17SZ9WlRAT931eu3TsnpL7CKJ