1. Katharine Faulkner "Kay" Swift was an American composer of popular and classical music, the first woman to score a hit musical completely.
12 Facts About Kay Swift
1. 2.
Katharine Faulkner Kay Swift was born to English American Samuel Shippen Kay Swift, a music critic, and Ellen Faulkner of England in New York City.
3.
Kay Swift was educated at the Veltin School for Girls and then trained as a classical musician and composer at the Institute of Musical Art, where she studied piano with Bertha Tapper.
4.
Kay Swift was Christian, and Warburg's parents had accepted their marriage, but an uncle by marriage Jacob Schiff objected to it.
5.
Kay Swift had three children by Warburg between 1919 and 1924.
6.
Kay Swift frequently consulted Swift about his musicals and other works, and she became a trusted musical advisor.
7.
Gershwin and Kay Swift's affair lasted over ten years in all, until his death in 1937.
8.
In 1934 Kay Swift composed a ballet for George Balanchine entitled Alma Mater, which marked Balanchine's first original work with an American setting.
9.
Kay Swift was staff composer at Radio City Music Hall where she wrote musical numbers for The Rockettes, and was Director of Light Music for the 1939 World's Fair.
10.
Kay Swift met cowboy Faye Hubbard at the World's Fair rodeo, "The American Jubilee", and eloped with him two weeks later.
11.
In 1952, Kay Swift provided the score for Cornelia Otis Skinner's one-woman Broadway show Paris '90.
12.
Nathaniel Shilkret directed an orchestra consisting of Kay Swift playing piano, Irving Becker playing violin and the remaining musicians hired locally in each city.