Alan Kay, clarinet

 Praised by the New York Times for his “spellbinding” performances and “infectious enthusiasm and panache,” Alan R. Kay is Principal Clarinetist and a former Artistic Director of Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and serves as Principal Clarinet with New York’s Riverside Symphony and Little Orchestra Society. 

Mr. Kay is the recipient of the Classical Recording Foundation’s Samuel Sanders Award, the C.D. Jackson Award at Tanglewood, a Presidential Scholars Teacher Award, and the 1989 Young Concert Artists Award with the sextet Hexagon, featured in the prizewinning film, “Debut.”  This year, anonymous donors established the Alan R. Kay Music Scholarship in perpetuity at The Juilliard School, where he has taught for over 40 years.

A founding member of the Windscape Quintet, he is a regular guest in chamber music venues throughout the world, including the Yellow Barn, Orlando (Holland), Bowdoin, Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society Festivals, and the Cape May Music Festival, where he curated a concert series for 25 years. A frequent performer of the clarinet quintet canon, he has collaborated with the Orion, Calidore, Miró, Shanghai, Guarneri, Mendelssohn, Rus, Fine Arts, Chester and Colorado string quartets. Mr. Kay taught at the Summer Music Academy in Leipzig, Germany in 2004 and currently teaches at the Manhattan School of Music, The Juilliard School and Stony Brook University, where he also serves as Executive Director of the Stony Brook Symphony Orchestra. 

A virtuoso of wind chamber music repertoire, Mr. Kay has recorded with Hexagon, Windscape and the Sylvan Winds; his transcriptions for wind quintet are published by Trevco Music and International Opus. Recent recording projects include the Brahms Clarinet Quintet with Rusquartet for Etcetera Records, full-length CDs of the works of Rudolf Escher and Hans Kox, both to be released in 2022, Michael Torke’s “Psalms and Canticles,” released in 2021, “TIME,” released in 2022 and “Unseen,” released this year. He has served on the juries of international chamber music competitions in Trapani, Italy and Rolduc, Holland, Young Concert Artists, Concert Artist Guild, and the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.

Also a conductor, Mr. Kay studied conducting at Juilliard with the late Otto-Werner Mueller and has led orchestras and chamber ensembles at Juilliard, Stony Brook and in the New York City area. He currently serves as Executive Director of the Stony Brook (University) Symphony Orchestra, which he conducts regularly.