Kenneth Weiss was born in New York City where he attended the High School of Performing Arts. After studying with Lisa Goode Crawford at the Oberlin Conservatory he continued with Gustav Leonhardt at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam.

From 1990-1993 he was Musical Assistant to William Christie at Les Arts Florissants for numerous opera productions and recordings. He later conducted Les Arts Florissants in ‘Doux Mensonges’ by the choreographer Jiri Kylian at the Paris Opera, and was co-director with William Christie of the first three editions of Les Arts Florissants’ ‘Jardin de Voix’ program.

Kenneth Weiss focuses on recitals, chamber music, teaching and conducting. His most recent recitals include Nuremburg, Montpellier, Barcelona, Dijon, Geneva, Antwerp, the Cite de la musique and Théâtre des Abbesses in Paris, Théâtre de Caen, Madrid, La Roque d’Anthéron, Santander, Lisbon, San Sebastian, Innsbruck, Santiago de Compostela, La Chaise-Dieu, La Chaud de Fonds, Bruges and New York, Nishinomiya, Kugenuma and Tokyo.

In 2023 he performed Bach’s Art of Fugue in Berkeley, the festivals of Saint-Savin, Laon (Bach / Leipzig 1723 – 2023 series), Santiago de Compostela, Aranjuez and in the Théâtre du Musée Grévin, Paris. His 2024 Art of Fugue performances include the prestigious Saintes Festival.

Kenneth is a regular performer with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He also performs in the Berkshire Bach Ensemble’s ‘Bach at New Year’s’ concerts with Eugene Drucker, and the summer Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival. In 2024 Kenneth makes his début appearance at the prestigious Music@Menlo chamber music festival in San Francisco. He performs in recital with the violinists Fabio Biondi, Daniel Hope, Monica Huggett and Lina Tur Bonet, the cellist Marc Coppey and mandolinist Avi Avital.

In collaboration with the choreographer Trisha Brown, Kenneth Weiss was musical director of ‘M.O.’, a ballet on Bach’s Musical Offering, first performed at La Monnaie in Brussels. He was also musical director of the Aix-en-Provence European Music Academy’s staged productions of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and a Monteverdi madrigal program. Both productions were revived at the Lille, Monte-Carlo and Bordeaux operas. He has conducted staged performances of Mozart’s Mariage of Figaro at the Cité de la musique in Paris and Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea in Bilbao and Oviedo. He has also conducted The English Concert, Concerto Copenhagen, Orquesta de Salamanca, Divino Sospiro, Orchestre de Rouen, the Orchestre régional de Basse-Normandie, Orchestre National des Pays de Loire, the Orchestre des Pays de Savoie and the Orchestre d’Auvergne. In 2024, Kenneth conducts and performs Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos with the Orchestre National Avignon-Provence.

In 2001 Satirino records released the first in a series of highly acclaimed solo harpsichord recordings by Kenneth Weiss: Bach’s Partitas, Scarlatti Sonatas, Rameau Opera and Ballet transcriptions (on two of the historical instruments in the Musée de la musique in Paris), an album including Bach’s Italian Concerto, French Overture and the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, Scarlatti’s ‘Essercizi per gravicembalo’ in coproduction with the Madrid Caja Bank’s Spanish music label, Los SIGLOS de ORO, a live recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations , two live recordings of selections from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, ‘A Cleare Day’ and ‘Heaven & Earth’, and Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier recorded at the Cité de la musique in Paris on the historic Ruckers-Taskin instrument belonging to the Musée de la musique, a recording that has been widely acclaimed and awarded a “Choc” in the French magazine Classica.  He has also recorded the violin sonatas of Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre with the violinist Lina Tur Bonet for the Pan Classics label.

In October 2018 Kenneth Weiss gave the inaugural recital on the recently restored Taskin harpsichord belonging to the Museu da Música in Lisbon. It is on this instrument that he records Bach’s Art of Fugue in May 2021 at the Centro Cultural de Belém for the Paraty label. The album was awarded a Diapason d’Or in March 2023.

Kenneth Weiss has held teaching positions at the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, the Juilliard School in New York and the Geneva Haute école de musique. He currently teaches at the Paris Conservatory and where he is professor of chamber music.