Bruce Kennedy (2)

Bruce Kennedy is a distinguished American builder of harpsichords and clavichords who works from his workshop in Castelmuzio in southern Tuscany, Italy, since 2002. He began researching harpsichords out of a fascination with J.S.Bach's music and spent five years self-studying at Swarthmore College's Lang Music Library in Pennsylvania and other public European and American collections of Baroque instruments. In 1980, Kennedy relocated to Switzerland and opened his first workshop in Château-d'Œx. In 1990, Bruce reopened Kennedy Workshop in Amsterdam, closer to the florescent European period music scene. Kennedy built over 190 instruments, played by notable musicians, such as Gustav Leonhardt, Bob van Asperen, Pierre Hantaï, Skip Sempé, William Christie, Kenneth Weiss, Christophe Rousset, Andreas Staier, Menno van Delft, Ludger Rémy and Lars Ulrik Mortensen. Several prominent institutions commissioned Kennedy's harpsichords and clavichords: Juilliard School, Conservatorium van Amsterdam, Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Stiftung Händel-Haus, Hochschule für Musik in Dresden, Leipzig, Hannover, Trossingen and Vienna, The Guildhall School Of Music & Drama, Tokyo National University Of Fine Arts And Music, Universidad de Salamanca, and many others.