Home » Jazz Articles » Connie Kay
Jazz Articles about Connie Kay
Connie Kay Plays the Drums Impeccably
by Rob Mariani
The impeccable Mr. Connie Kay plays perfectly. If you say that sentence out loud in a chamber where there is just the slightest echo, and emphasize the p" sounds and the hard c" sounds just a little, you get a feeling of what this remarkable percussionist's drumming actually sounds like. In all music, I don't think there's ever been anything quite like Connie Kay's cymbals. You could detect the ping of his ride cymbal out of a thousand--dry ...
read moreThe Modern Jazz Quartet: The Music Inn
by Elliott Simon
...in our desire for beauty in all things we are open, and one in our search for that little city of gold where the flute-player never wearies, and the spring never fades, and the oracle is not silent, that little city which is the house of art, and where, with all the Music of the Spheres, and the laughter of the gods, Art waits for her worshippers-Oscar Wilde In 1950, while Senator McCarthy spearheaded his anti-artistic witch hunts, ...
read moreThe Modern Jazz Quartet: European Concert
by AAJ Staff
Ironically, The Modern Jazz Quartet's European Concert album finally is released on CD for the first time just before the passing of the third member of the legendary group, reducing the survivors to one: Percy Heath, who also is a member of one of the leading family triumvirates in jazz. Listed as one of the favorite MJQ albums by many of its fans, European Concert initially was released as a double-album package documenting the group's performances throughout Scandinavia in 1960. ...
read morePaul Desmond: Take Ten
by C. Andrew Hovan
As legendary a group as the Dave Brubeck Quintet was during the '60s, the fact remains that front line alto man Paul Desmond made some of his finest recordings away from Brubeck and on his own, first for RCA and then for CTI. His RCA sides present the cream of the crop of his recorded legacy, owing much to the fact that during this period Desmond chose not to work with a pianist but instead opted for guitar legend Jim ...
read more