Music professor contributes to Grammy winning album

A classical music album, featuring Southampton Professor of Musical Performance, Elizabeth Kenny, has scooped success at the Grammys.

Shakespeare Songs , a CD by acclaimed English tenor Ian Bostridge, won Best Classical Solo Vocal Album at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards held in Los Angeles.

The album marks the 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare and four centuries of music and performance that his plays and sonnets have inspired.

Professor Kenny, a world-renowned lute player, accompanied Ian Bostridge in songs by composers William Byrd, Thomas Morley, John Wilson and Robert Johnson. The unusually wide-ranging album also highlighted works by Korngold, Britten, Tippet and Stravinsky, played by Antonio Pappano, Michael Collins, Lawrence Power and Adam Walker.

Professor Kenny, comments: “It was a delight to be involved in this project. Ian and Antonio have a wonderful partnership which they extended with generosity and imagination to include works spanning four hundred years, showing the range of musical expression inspired by Shakespeare’s words.”

The win was tied with an album of songs by Schumann and Berg performed by musicians Dorothea Röschmann and Mitsuko Uchida.