American Composers Alliance > ACA Bulletin
Ulysses Kay was honored with a cover article in the Fall, 1957, issue of the American Composers Alliance Bulletin that contained an essay on Kay written by Nicolas Slonimsky. The full text is reproduced on the next page.
In his appraisal of Kay, Slonimsky wrote that "he is a composer who refuses to carry a label -- technical, racial, or stylistic. He writes music that corresponds to his artistic emotions, within a framwork of harmony, counterpoint, and orchestration that provides him with the broadest range of expression. He is not automatically satisfied with every piece he writes, simply because it is his...."
"The musical language of Ulysses Kay is that of enlightened modernism. This is the only 'ism' that he accepts, and even that only as a matter of chronological placement. Dissonant, expressive, if occasionally acrid, harmony is part of the inevitable modernistic material; Ulysses Kay is not self-conscious about its use. On the other hand he does not feel constrained to employ dissonance; there are passages in his work that are classically moderate."