New Director of Music Announced

For the past 150 years Uppingham has enjoyed a very strong reputation for music. When Uppingham's visionary Victorian Headmaster Edward Thring appointed Paul David in 1865 to be the School’s first ever Director of Music, he sought out the very best.

Thring consulted England’s foremost musician of the time, William Sterndale Bennett, and asked him to scour Europe for the most suitable person to lead Uppingham’s nascent music programme. Sterndale Bennett found Paul David in Leipzig and persuaded a musician of international renown to leave Germany for Rutland to develop Uppingham’s music. Paul David’s appointment was an unqualified – and pioneering – success, and it was under his leadership that a tradition of musical excellence at Uppingham began. 

For the past few months, much of this process has repeated, and from September 2019 the person who will be leading Uppingham’s music through the 2020s will be Andrew Kennedy.

Andrew is steeped in Uppingham. He was a music scholar at the School and left to be a Choral Scholar at King's College, Cambridge. Andrew’s further study at the Royal College of Music saw him win The Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Rose Bowl awarded to the most outstanding student of the year. In 2002, Andrew won a place on the Vilar Young Artists three-year programme at the Royal Opera House which, after performing many solo principal roles, launched his internationally distinguished professional music career. In that career, Andrew has won numerous prizes and awards including the 2005 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Rosenblatt Recital Prize, a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, and the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Young Artists’ Award in 2006. 

Andrew has held numerous roles in education. He was Head of Singing at Westminster School for four years, where he conducted and trained the School choirs and prepared pupils for entry to universities and conservatoires. Andrew has also been the Assistant Director of Music and Director of the Chapel Choir at Girton College Cambridge, and an external examiner for the Faculty of Music at Cambridge University.

Uppingham’s Headmaster, Dr Richard Maloney, said: “Andrew Kennedy’s energy and charisma are legendary, and I am delighted to have a Director of Music of such distinction joining us to lead Uppingham's music through the next decade. The reaction to Andrew’s appointment has been truly vitalising and I know his vision, insight, humanity and charm will inspire us all.”