Ulysses Kay: Works for
Chamber Orchestra
Metropolitan Philharmonic Orchestra
Kevin Scott, Conductor
Troy 961 (2007)
All Music
Ulysses Kay
Ulysses Kay
was the first notable African American composer to establish himself in
the white cultural mainstream with scores that almost never employed
the jazz blues colors or pictorialism employed by others, such as William Grant Still.
He was very much a member of the musical establishment, with a college
post and a style that evolved along the lines of his contemporary, William Schuman.
Kay
was the nephew of jazz cornetist and bandleader King Oliver.
...
Kay
obtained his bachelor's in music from the University of Arizona in
1938, then went on to obtain a master's in 1940 at the Eastman School of
Music, where he studied with Bernard Rogers and Howard Hanson. During the following two summers, he studied with Paul Hindemith
at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood. After wartime service in
the Navy (during which he played flute, saxophone, and piccolo in a Navy
band and piano in a jazz band), he studied composition with Otto Luening
at Columbia University (1946 - 1949). As a winner of the American Rome
Prize, he was affiliated with the American Academy in Rome from 1949 to
1952.
...
Kay
became a model for minority composers who wished to be taken seriously
in a white world. He did this by blending in stylistically; his music
sounded "American" in its rhythmic verve, but it almost never employed
blues, jazz, or African elements.
...
In the
1950s, he generated a far more varied output: the first two of his five
operas; the first two of his three string quartets; a great many songs;
and a number of substantial orchestral works, including the Sinfonia in E
major, Concerto for Orchestra, and Serenade.
[Ulysses Simpson Kay, Jr. (1917-1995)
is
profiled at AfriClassical.com,
which features a comprehensive Works List and a Bibliography by Prof.
Dominique-René de Lerma, www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com.]
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