Kenneth Hesketh began composing whilst a nine year old chorister at Liverpool Anglican Cathedral and completed his first work for orchestra at the age of thirteen. He received his first formal commission at nineteen for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Charles Groves. He studied at the Royal College of Music, London, with Edwin Roxburgh, Joseph Horovitz and Simon Bainbridge between 1987 and 1992 and attended Tanglewood in 1995 as the Leonard Bernstein Fellow where he studied with Henri Dutilleux. After completing a Masters degree in Composition at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA, where he studied with William Bolcolm and William Albright, a series of awards followed: the Shakespeare Prize scholarship from the Toepfer Foundation, Hamburg at the behest of Sir Simon Rattle, an award from the Liverpool Foundation for Sport and the Arts, and on his return to London in 1999 Hesketh was awarded the Constant and Kit Lambert Fellow at the Royal College of Music, with support from the Worshipful Company of Musicians.
From 2003 to 2005 he was New Music Fellow at Kettle's Yard and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge where he curated a series of new music chamber concerts. The Fondation André Chevillion-Yvonne Bonnaud prize was awarded to Hesketh at the 2004 Concours International de Piano d'Orléans after a performance of his Three Japanese Miniatures by pianist Daniel Becker.
In 2007, Hesketh took up the position of Composer in the House with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra for two years. The scheme, devised by the Royal Philharmonic Society in partnership with the PRS Foundation, was designed to allow composers the time and space to create new work, and to take their place at the heart of the orchestral community. Hesketh's tenure with the RLPO saw the creation of works for many of the instrumental groups within the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society, from the orchestra and contemporary music ensemble (Ensemble 10/10, with whom Hesketh already has a thriving relationship) to youth ensembles, chamber groups and choirs. He also took part in teaching and outreach projects in Liverpool and Manchester during the two years.
Hesketh has received numerous commissions from international ensembles and organisations including the Fromm Foundation at Harvard University, the Continuum Ensemble, a Faber Millennium Commission for the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the BBC Philharmonic, the BBC Proms, Hans Werner Henze and the Endymion Ensemble (in honour of Henze's 75th birthday), the Munich Biennale, the Michael Vyner Trust for the London Sinfonietta, an ENO/Almeida joint commission, the Ensemble 10/10 and the Opera Group at the Linbury Theatre, Covent Garden.
Hesketh’s works for symphonic wind band have become contemporary classics of the genre. Tuneful and immediately accessible, regular performances of them around the world have led to British, Japanese, American and Canadian commercial recordings. These are published by Faber Music. His many other works are published by Schott & Co and Novello.
A busy composer and arranger with no lack of on-going commissions to fulfill, Kenneth Hesketh is a professor at the Royal College of Music and honorary professor at Liverpool University.