Tony Kinsey

Senior Citizen (Professional)

Composer/Lyricist:	Both
Genre:	Media

Biography

Long regarded as one of Britain's finest jazz drummers and composers, Tony Kinsey's multi-faceted musical career extends from jazz player to composer of music in many genres, including works for full orchestra and chamber groups.

He was a founder member of the John Dankworth Seven, working with the band for a period of two years, leaving only so that he could concertrate more on playing in London's leading jazz clubs of the period. He went on to lead various quartets and quintets which were the most successful of the time, winning many awards and topping polls held in all the musical journals of the day. These groups have performed in many of Europe's leading concert halls, and worked countless times at Ronnie Scott's Club in London.

In his playing career he has worked with many of the world's jazz greats, including Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Sarah Vaughan, Oscar Peterson, Ben Webster, Clark Terry, Sweets Eddison and many more.

Although his musical life these days is dominated by composing, whenever possible he enjoys working with his quartet or big band, and in particular derives much satisfaction from the latter which at times has been joined by his long time friend and colleague John Dankworth, forming the Kinsey Dankworth Orchestra.

As a player he has recorded for lots of studio sessions, playing on many best-selling records and TV shows.

As a composer he has written for films, television and library. One of his orchestral scores of which he is particularly fond is the score for Souvenir, a Geoff Reeve film starring Christopher Plummer and Christopher Cazenove.

In television he worked on the series That's Life, composing music for this show for three years, one of his tasks being to write a song every week, working with such lyricists as Herbie Kretzmer and Sir Tim Rice. He has written music for several TV series including Castle of Adventure, based on the Enid Blyton sequence of books.

He composed the music for the documentary Colour which won the gold award at the Montreux TV Festival. He has also written music for a great number of TV commercials.

One of his favourite outlets for composition is in chamber music, and he has written several works for string quartet, two of which have been recorded by the Delme Quartet.

Tony studied percussion in New York with Cozy Cole and Bill West, and composition and orchestration with Bill Russo

Important Works		Performances
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