Hershy Kay (November 17, 1919 – December 2, 1981) was an American composer, arranger, and orchestrator. He is most noteworthy for the orchestrations of several Broadway shows, and for the ballets he arranged for George Balanchine's New York City Ballet.
Biography
The son of a Philadelphia printer, Kay became a student at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute (1936–1940) where he studied cello and composition under Randall Thompson, in whose classes he was a classmate of Leonard Bernstein.[1] In New York he played in various pit orchestras and started arranging music to escape playing the cello. Self-taught as an orchestrator, for his first professional project Kay orchestrated several songs for Brazilian soprano Elsie Houston's show at the Rainbow Room in 1940.[2]
A composer in his own right, Hershy Kay's reconstruction and orchestration of Louis Moreau Gottschalk's Grande Tarantelle, Op. 67, for piano and orchestra July 24, 1957,[3] later choreographed by Balanchine as Tarantella, led to a renewed interest in Gottschalk's music. He also composed music for an LP, Mother Goose, with the actors Boris Karloff, Cyril Ritchard and Celeste Holm;[4] this was first released on Caedmon in 1958.[5] In 1961, Kay conducted Eddie Sauter's Jazz compositions for Stan Getz's Focus record. He also re-orchestrated Sigmund Romberg's music in a 1963 Columbia Masterworks recording of selections from the 1924 operetta The Student Prince, starring Roberta Peters, Jan Peerce, and Giorgio Tozzi.
