About the Music Director

Brendan J. Kenney, Founder/Music Director

Brendan J. Kenney (FPO Founder/Music Director) is a music director, conductor, and accompanist in the Greater Boston area with fifteen years’ experience, primarily in Musical Theatre. Brendan’s love of conducting surfaced in High School, particularly when he opted not to walk with his graduating class so he could “guest conduct” the wind ensemble’s performance of Pomp & Circumstance. Since then, he has had dozens of productions under his baton at educational, community, and community children’s levels – and had the honor of conducting the centennial season opener for The Concord Players in November, 2019.

In 2010, Brendan founded the “Call for Pit Orchestra Musicians” initiative to help raise awareness of the importance of budgeting for and utilizing the full orchestration for Musical Theatre. To date, the flagship Boston branch has over 3500 members with additional branches launched across the country and in Canada. The CFPOM initiative was also born of Brendan’s desire to start a summer/holiday community Pops orchestra, and the Firebird Pops is the result – ten years later!

For almost a decade, Brendan was a full-time Organist/Cantor/Choir Director for Catholic Churches, with a particular concentration on the Traditional Latin Mass and Gregorian Chant/Renaissance Polyphony. Between his church career and musical theatre career, he could be found playing, analyzing, coaching, and conducting music across the span of thousands of years in a single day. Despite a recent career change, he still occasionally substitutes as a cantor or organist alongside his full-time job as a web developer for a tech corporation headquartered in the Seaport District of Boston.

Outside of music direction and conducting, Brendan has been seen on stage in “The Secret Garden” (Captain Albert Lennox), “Grey Gardens” (Gould), and “Songs for a New World” (Man 2), as well as making guest appearances with the “MIT Artists Beyond the Desk” program. He studies voice with Kim Lamoureux out of Middleton, MA and competed in the 2019 NATS Adult Musical Theatre division with high marks.