Daisy Kennedy
Daisy Kennedy in 1923
Background information
Born(1893-01-16)16 January 1893
Burra-Burra, South Australia
Died30 July 1981(1981-07-30) (aged 88)
Hammersmith, London, England
Instrument(s)Violin

Daisy Fowler Kennedy (16 January 1893 – 30 July 1981) was an Australian-born concert violinist.

She was born in Burra-Burra, 160 km north of Adelaide, to parents of Scottish and Irish descent.[1] Her father, Joseph A. Kennedy, was headmaster of Glenelg Primary School and president of the South Australian Public School Teachers' Union.[2] For three years, she was Elder scholar at the Adelaide Conservatory[1] under Mrs. Alderman and Hermann Heinicke.[2] She was a private pupil of Otakar Ševčík in Vienna for a year, and then studied for two years in the Meister-Schule there.[1] She appeared in London in 1911 and toured widely in Europe and in the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

On 15 April 1914,[2] she married the Russian pianist Benno Moiseiwitsch; their daughter, the theatre designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch, was born in December the same year. They had a second daughter, Sandra. After divorcing Moiseiwitsch, she married the English playwright and poet John Drinkwater in December 1924.[3] They had a daughter, Penny Drinkwater, who went on to become a wine writer and member of the circle of wine writers.

On 24 August 1927 a Proms performance of Brahms' Violin Concerto ground to a halt in the first movement. Kennedy apparently blamed a lack of rehearsal time, but the Times said that she suffered "a lapse of memory...which had the effect of making her play all the better when she recovered her nerve".[4][5]

She was a cousin of cellist Lauri Kennedy,[6] and thus also related to Lauri's son John Kennedy, another cellist, and grandson, the violinist Nigel Kennedy.

References

  1. 1 2 3 A. Eaglefield-Hull (Ed.), A Dictionary of Modern Music and Musicians (Dent, London & Toronto 1924), 267.
  2. 1 2 3 "South Australian Violinist". The Register (Adelaide). Vol. LXXIX, no. 21, 075. South Australia. 29 May 1914. p. 10. Retrieved 7 June 2016 – via National Library of Australia.
  3. ↑ 'John Drinkwater Weds; English Dramatist, Divorced, Marries Miss Daisy Kennedy, Violinist', in The New York Times, 17 December 1924
  4. ↑ Jeremy Pound. 100 most memorable Proms ever
  5. ↑ The Times, 25 August 1927, p. 8
  6. ↑ Peter Campbell, 'Kennedy, Irvine Robert Laurie (Lauri) (1896–1980)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 17, Melbourne University Press, pp 617-618.
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