Kabalevsky

Dmitri Kabalevsky (1904) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor.

Kaye, Hershey

Hershy Kay lived from 1919 until 1981. He was a composer and arranger who was born in Philadelphia. A Broadway and screen arranger who often worked for Leonard Bernstein, he composed and arranged ballets including Balanchine’s Western Symphony.

Kaye, Ulysses

Ulysses (Simpson) Kay lived from 1917 until 1995. He was a composer who was born in Tucson, Ariz. One of the first prominent African-American composers, he studied with Hindemith and Hanson and wrote mildly modernist works that won numerous prizes.

Kissin

Evgeny Kissin was born in Moscow in 1972 and began picking out melodies on the piano at age two. He attended a school for musically gifted children and made his debut at age ten.

Ketelbey

Albert W. Ketelbey was a British composer. His best known works are “In a Monastery Garden” and “In a Persian Market”. Both are beautifully written and imaginatively scored musical fantasies.

Key

Khachaturian

Aram Khachaturian lived from 1903 until 1968. He an Armenian composer, born in Tiflis, Georgia and was a student of folksong, and an authority on oriental music. He is renowned for the exotic beauty of his themes and the rich texture of his orchestration. He used the principles of Armenian folk music in his compositions which include two symphonies, a piano concerto, a cello concerto, choral works, and several ballets, among them the “Gayane” ballet suite with the famous “Sabre Dance”. An excerpt from his ballet music Spartacus topped the popular music charts when used as the theme music for the TV series The Onedin Line in the 1970s.

Kodály

Zoltán Kodály

Korngold

Erich Wolfgang Korngold lived from 1897 until 1957. He was born in Brno and made his early reputation in Vienna as a composer, even in childhood. In 1934 he moved with Max Reinhardt to Hollywood turning his attention then to film scores of remarkable accomplishment. Most of his music in more traditional forms belongs to the European period of his work, including much of his piano and chamber music, some written for the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in World War I.

Koussevitzky

Serge Koussevitzky lived from 1874 until 1951. He was a conductor and virtuoso on the double bass who was born in Vishny-Volochok, Russia. He took up conducting and in 1909 founded his own orchestra and publishing company in Moscow. After the Revolution he emigrated to Paris, where his Concerts Koussevitzky presented important new works by Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Ravel, and others.

In 1924 he was named conductor of the Boston Symphony – he would conduct it for 25 years, a legendary era for the orchestra. He continued his historic advocacy of contemporary composers (though tending to conservative ones), commissioning major works from Stravinsky, Hindemith, and Prokofiev, as well as championing American composers including Copland, Piston, and Barber.

In the 1930s he developed the orchestra’s Tanglewood summer concerts and the associated school called the Berkshire Music Center (1940). After his retirement from the orchestra in 1949, he guest-conducted in Europe and the Americas.

Kuhlau

Friedrich Daniel Kuhlau lived from 1786 until 1832. He was a Danish composer of German extraction, and is principally known for his piano music. Much of it well known to students of the instrument. He wrote extensively for the flute, although he did not play the instrument. His chamber music without flute includes three piano quartets, in the musical idiom of the period.

Kyser

Kay (James King Kern) Kyser lived from 1906 until 1985 and was a bandleader; born in Rocky Mount, N.C. He formed his first band in college in the late-1920s; it toured widely and later expanded. In the early-1930s he performed at the Blackhawk Restaurant in Chicago and in 1937 he began broadcasting his popular radio show, Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge; it appeared on television from 1949 to 1951, the year he retired. He appeared in several films and released many hit records.