About
STEVE KENYON has performed his original music at the Blue Note, Birdland, Carnegie Hall and live on WNYC radio. He plays regularly with The NY Philharmonic when saxophones are required, and has worked with many other ensembles, from Philip Glass to Maria Schneider to The Who. He plays each year for the Tony Awards, Kennedy Center Honors and Encores! at NY City Center.
In addition to his compositions for theNY Saxophone Quartet, where he plays soprano, his original music is played by the NewYorkestra big band and the Pit Stop Players; groups of which he is also a member. He has had pieces commissioned by Synchronicity, The Triton Brass Quintet, The International Double Reed Society and NJCU. Some of his work is published by 3-2 Music. He was awarded a Downbeat magazine jazz composition award as a student.
Currently playing Reed 1 at Mean Girls, he can be heard on dozens of Broadway albums. Other recordings: his own Fidel’s Nightmare, and albums with Audra McDonald, NewYorkestra, Maria Schneider, Gil Evans Project, Barbara Cook, Gotham Jazz Orchestra, Tony Trishka, Judy Collins, and lots more. Live TV includes many Lincoln Center and Kennedy Center events, Sound of Music, Peter Pan, Today, Letterman. Other TV - Smash, Ed, Wonder Pets, many jingles. Film - West Side Story (2020, with the NY Philharmonic), Hollywoodland, Hail, Caesar!, and What Just Happened, for which he also wrote some of the orchestrations.
A National Merit Scholar, he has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from The University of Miami, and teaches at Hofstra University.
compositions
Saxophone Quartet
- Three Intentions
- A Brief Hello
- Best of Seven
- Look Down
- Chrismastime is Here (Guaraldi, arr. Kenyon)
Big Band
- Sink or Swim
- Languid and Bittersweet
Woodwinds
- Elegy (clarinet and piano)
- Love Song (clarinet solo)
- Burton Lane Medley (doubling woodwind trio)
- Doubler's Dilemma (doubling woodwind trio)
- The Day After Yesterday (quintet of woodwind doublers)
- The Next Day (quintet of woodwind doublers)