Grounded in the sonic traditions of the Black diaspora, Kenyon’s creative practice engages questions of embodiment and placemaking.

Kenyon Duncan is a composer, performer, producer, and arranger based in Brooklyn, with roots in Northern California. Recent commissions include works for iSing Silicon Valley, Touch of Blue: New American Vocal Ensemble, the Princeton Playhouse Choir & Orchestra, and the Chamber Music Society of Central Virginia. His sound installation Music for Strangers was featured at the Yale Center for Collaborative Arts and Media. Kenyon is an artist-citizen-in-residence with the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music in Mendocino County, CA. Increasingly in demand as a producer, Kenyon has also contributed to multiple studio albums as a vocalist and pianist and is currently working on a solo recording project.

Kenyon’s vocal and instrumental arrangements have been commissioned by groups around the US and performed in venues all over the world. Recent commissions include reinterpretations of Charlie Smalls’ “Soon As I Get Home” from The Wiz and “Love Will Find A Way” from Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake’s landmark musical Shuffle Along. Kenyon’s experience as an ensemble leader has led to the production of 3 award-winning albums, bringing him around the world to lead workshops on vocal performance and ensemble technique. He spent a year directing The Whiffenpoofs, programming over 200 concerts across 25 states and 26 countries.

In addition to performance and composition, Kenyon works to cultivate equity in the arts. Kenyon used his year-long tenure as the music director of the Yale Whiffenpoofs to end gender-based restrictions on membership for the first time in the groups nearly 110 years, building on generations of student activism. He continues to advocate for a more expansive approach to the human voice with regard to gender in ensemble spaces. As a part of his work with the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music, he spent a year developing a music program for the rural school district in Mendocino, CA. He currently teaches voice and piano in private lessons.

Kenyon holds a B.A. in Computing & The Arts from Yale University, where he studied composition, computer music, and conducting. Kenyon’s work has been critiqued and encouraged by Gabriela Lena Frank, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Nathalie Joachim, Haruka Fujii, Charles Overton, Kathryn Alexander, Scott Petersen, and Konrad Kaczmarek.