Ulysses Kay: Works for Chamber Orchestra (2007)

The resurgence of interest in concert music by African-American composers has not benefited Ulysses Kay as much as it should have, and this well-executed program of Kay pieces by the composer's disciple Kevin Scott, leading New York's Metropolitan Philharmonic Orchestra (actually a group of freelance players), gives a clue as to why. Often the ear takes a bit of tuning to hear what Kay was getting at, and not because his music was written in one of the more difficult methods of his middle twentieth century heyday. The trick ... Read More

The resurgence of interest in concert music by African-American composers has not benefited Ulysses Kay as much as it should have, and this well-executed program of Kay pieces by the composer's disciple Kevin Scott, leading New York's Metropolitan Philharmonic Orchestra (actually a group of freelance players), gives a clue as to why. Often the ear takes a bit of tuning to hear what Kay was getting at, and not because his music was written in one of the more difficult methods of his middle twentieth century heyday. The trick is in the nature of the African-American component of Kay's music, which, at least for listeners who come to Kay from European tonal composers, isn't attached to the usual framework of peppy French neo-classicism: as Scott points out in his detailed and helpful (but unfortunately sloppily edited) booklet notes, Kay's European models were German and Italian rather than French. Perhaps the ideal way to approach Kay is to listen to some jazz first: then, in both the more cinematic... Read Less