Kenneth Hesketh

Kenneth Hesketh (born Liverpool, 1968) is a British composer of contemporary classical music in numerous genres including opera, orchestral, chamber, vocal and solo. He also composes music for wind and brass bands as well as seasonal music for choir.

Biography

Hesketh began composing whilst a chorister at Liverpool Anglican Cathedral and completed his first work for orchestra at the age of thirteen. He received his first formal commission at nineteen for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Charles Groves. He studied at the Royal College of Music, London, with Edwin Roxburgh, Joseph Horovitz and Simon Bainbridge between 1987 and 1992 and attended Tanglewood in 1995 as the Leonard Bernstein Fellow where he studied with Henri Dutilleux. After completing a Masters degree in Composition at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA, a series of awards followed: the Shakespeare Prize scholarship from the Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg at the behest of Sir Simon Rattle, an award from the Liverpool Foundation for Sport and the Arts, and on his return to London in 1999 Hesketh was awarded the Constant and Kit Lambert Fellowship at the Royal College of Music, with support from the Worshipful Company of Musicians.

From 2003 to 2005 he was New Music Fellow at Kettle's Yard and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge where he curated a series of new music chamber concerts. The Fondation André Chevillion-Yvonne Bonnaud prize was awarded to Hesketh at the 2004 Concours...
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