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 symphony 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 concentrate more on playing in London’s leading jazz clubs. He went on to lead various Quartets and Quintets which were most successful, winning many awards and topping polls held in all the musical journals.
His 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, Annie Ross, Oscar Peterson, Ben Webster, Clark Terry, Sweets Eddison and many more.
Whenever possible he enjoys working and writing for his Quartet or Big Band, and in particular derives much satisfaction from the latter which, in the past,on occasion, was joined by his long time friend and colleague the late Sir John Dankworth, forming the ‘Kinsey Dankworth Orchestra’. In a review by the magazine ‘Jazz Wise” of Tony’s most recent Big Band concert the Mag’ gave the band a ‘best rating’ and described the orchestra as ‘world class’.
He has written music for a great many library production albums, and in this capacity his music has been used in the movies “The Body Guard’, “ My Best Friends Wedding”, “Killing Jessica Stein” and television productions like “The Oprah Winfrey show”, “Friends” , “Agatha Christie’s Poirot” and “Absolutely Fabulous”. He has also composed for musical theatre. In the later medium he has just finished writing a score {music & lyrics] to a book by Ray Galton and Roger Smith, called Duckin’and Divin’: [a comedy fhat swings].
One of the projects he particularly enjoyed was writing the score for Geoff Reeve’s film “Souvenir”
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 for each show, which had to be completed within a day, working with such lyricists as Herbie Kretzmer and Sir Tim Rice.He has also written the music for several TV series including “Willo the Wisp”, “Wimpole Village”,and “Castle of Adventure”, and a great many television commercials.
A recent project completed, a work for Harmonica and Strng Quartet, will have a London premier at St Johns Smith Square on the 1st of june 2012
Tony studied percussion in New York with Cozy Cole and Bill West, and composition and orchestration with Bill Russo
Tony Kinsey’s website: http://tony-kinsey.co.uk
Way Out West 