Milton Kaye

American pianist, songwriter, and arranger. Born 22 June 1909 in Brooklyn, New York Died 14 August 2006 in New York City, New York. He was married to singer and actress Shannon Bolin. Kaye was born to a musical family and went to Carnegie Hall concerts as a child but his father discouraged from becoming a musician. But after graduating with a teaching degree to please his father, he studied at the Institute of Musical Art, the forerunner of the Juilliard School, and earned a PhD at Columbia. An advocate of American Music, Milton Kaye toured extensively in Europe under the aegis of the U.S. State Department playing jazz and ragtime as a Goodwill Ambassador. He has been a soloist with many orchestras, including the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy and the NBC Symphony of the Air under Toscanini. He introduced Dmitri Shostakovich’s first concerto to a U.S. audience. He also served as musical director for shows on all three major networks. In 1944, Kaye accompanied the violinist Fritz Kreisler on an eight-week USO tour of war zones in Italy. He later declined to join Heifetz on a more permanent basis in California, but he did make some recordings with the violinist after the war. BMI IPI #: 40172916.