Elizabeth Kenny studied guitar with Michael Lewin and lute with Nigel North. Robert Spencer and Pat O’Brien gave her advice and inspiration. She has a solo repertoire ranging from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century. She is a principal player in the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and regularly appears with other leading period instrument groups. She has been a regular part of William Christie’s Les Arts Florissants since 1993, and plays Renaissance music with the viol consorts Concordia (UK) and L’Ensemble Orlando Gibbons (France). She has made dozens of recordings for CD, radio and television as well as touring throughout Europe, the USA and Japan. Elizabeth Kenny’s special interest in the literature of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries has led her to create themed programmes with recital partners including Robin Blaze, Mark Padmore and James Gilchrist. She spent two years teaching at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin, and is now professor of lute at the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 2003 she introduced the Spencer collection of music, books and instruments to the public by devising a series of lectures and concerts culminating in a fully staged Elizabethan entertainment, which she directed for the City of London Festival. In 2004–5 she produced a tour of newly edited works by Charpentier which were written for the Grand Dauphin, heir to Louis XIV, for an unusual ensemble of voices, recorders and continuo. Most recently Elizabeth Kenny has been awarded one of the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s Fellowships in the creative and performing arts. The fellowship at Southampton University will enable her to pursue a three-year project reassessing the history of seventeenthcentury English song through performances and published papers.