Nicholas Kenyon

Nicholas Kenyon was born in Cheshire, went to school in Manchester, and read Modern HIstory at Balliol College Oxford. He worked for the English Bach Festival and as a freelance music critic before joining BBC Radio 3. In 1979 he was invited to join Andrew Porter as music critic for The New Yorker, and then returned to the UK as a music critic for The Times, music editor of The Listener, and in 1983 was appointed editor of the journal Early Music. In 1988 he edited the influential book Authenticity and Early Music. During this time he was a regular broadcaster, and in 1992 he was appointed Controller of BBC Radio 3. He was responsible for the award-winning series Fairest Isle (1995) a celebration of British music across the ages, and Sounding the Century (1997-9), a nationwide broadcast festival of twentieth-century music at the close of the millennium. From 1996 to 2007 he was Director of the BBC Proms, and became Controller BBC Proms, Live Events and TV Classical Music, overseeing projects such as the Queen's Jubilee Concerts at Buckingham Palace in 2002. He was Chairman and President of the European Broadcasting Union's Radio Committee from 2000. In 2007 he was appointed Managing Director of the Barbican Centre, London. He has continued to write and broadcast as a regular contributor to Radio 3's Record Review, and has been a regular lecturer on The Bach Journey (Martin Randall Travel). He was the writer and consultant to Deutsche Grammophon's massive Bach 333 edition of all the composer's works.