By CAROLYN BROWN
Staff Writer
Jazz bassist George Kaye, longtime member of the Valley’s Green Street Trio, died on Monday, Feb. 10, at the age of 73 after a period of failing health.
Bassist George Kaye, longtime member of the Green Street Trio and a key figure in the Valley’s jazz community, died on Monday, Feb. 10, at the age of 73 after a period of failing health. COURTESY RUTH GRIGGS
“He was a very deeply caring person,” said Ruth Griggs, president of the Northampton Jazz Festival. “He loved to mentor young musicians. He was very curious about new people coming into the community and onto the bandstand and always reached out to people to just get to know them better. He was also very creative in his thinking, let alone his playing.”
Kaye, a self-taught musician who learned from jazz albums, started playing bass in high school. He lived and worked as a musician in Albany in the mid-’70s, performing with saxophonist Nick Brignola, then moved to New York City to continue playing bass as a freelance musician. He got his bachelor’s degree in music from the Manhattan School of Music in 1997, then moved to Brattleboro, Vermont, in 2001.
In 2015, Kaye got a master’s degree in music from the Jazz Composition & Arranging Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The school’s Department of Music & Dance posted a tribute to Kaye earlier this month on social media, which said, “He was an extraordinary bassist and a great friend with a huge heart.”
Locally, Kaye was a member of the Northampton Jazz Festival board of directors from 2018 to 2021 and served as an advisor to the festival after that. Griggs said that Kaye was foundational to the growth of the western Massachusetts jazz scene because he brought musicians from New York City and beyond to the Pioneer Valley – and he liked to think big.
“When he was on the board of directors of the Northampton Jazz Festival, he would say, ‘You’ve gotta bring Ron Carter here,’” said Griggs. Carter, the most recorded bassist in jazz history, a three-time Grammy Award winner and an NEA Jazz Master, would have been a big get. The other board members were skeptical.
“Sure enough,” said Griggs, “we had Ron Carter here in 2022, and it was a completely sold-out show.”
With all of the musicians that Kaye brought to the Pioneer Valley, Griggs said, “We’re just reaping the beauty of that generosity that he had.”
One of Kaye’s longtime friends, Paul Arslanian, the pianist in Green Street Trio and executive producer of the Northampton Jazz Workshop, said Kaye was a generous man who cared about helping young musicians and had a “really creative, spontaneous mind.”
Bassist George Kaye, right, with saxophonist Houston Person last year after a performance at The Drake in Amherst. The two met in the late 1990s when Kaye was studying at Manhattan School of Music, and they went on to perform, record and tour together. PHOTO BY RICARD TORRES-MATELUNA
“He was a natural-born teacher,” Arslanian said. “He always wanted to pass on what he knew,” telling students “not what they were doing wrong, but what they could do better. He did it in such a good-natured way that people are writing, testifying how important that was to their careers.”
Arslanian, like Griggs, said that a key element of Kaye’s legacy is that he “brought New York City to the Valley” – not only in the musical talent that he recruited to play here, but in a particular work ethic as well: “You have to really work at the craft. You don’t stop practicing, you don’t stop learning, every gig is important.”
“I’ll never forget him, for sure,” Arslanian said.
Nearly everybody who spoke with the Gazette for this story mentioned that Kaye was known for being outspoken about his opinions.
“He loved life. He was always totally engaged when you talked to him, very opinionated. He was very New York brash, almost. He spoke what he meant. He said it, and he didn’t have very many guardrails in terms of his social interaction, but he wasn’t afraid to say what he was thinking,” Arslanian said. “Sometimes it [rubbed] people the wrong way, but most of the time, they took it as someone that was very genuinely interested in who they were.”
“George impressed me as a person with the aura and intensity of someone with a strong or passionate point of view,” said jazz historian and radio host Tom Reney, who also serves as an advisor to the Northampton Jazz Festival. “It may have been for a particular artist he was endorsing for the festival, or for artists booked for the weekly Northampton Jazz Workshop. I don’t think George was shy about speaking his mind.”
Beyond his outspokenness, Reney said, “George leaves a legacy of excellence, readiness, and openness to jazz at its freshest and most spontaneous levels of creation.”
Outside of music, Kaye was also passionate about science; he studied engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and loved watching Neil deGrasse Tyson’s lectures online. He founded the company Moscode, which produced amplifiers, and co-founded a recording studio in Manhattan with jazz drummer Jimmy Madison.
“I’m a carpenter and a fix-it guy, and he was sort of a fix-it guy, too,” said Arslanian. “We had a lot of conversations about how to make the world better.”
Eugene Uman, director of the Vermont Jazz Center, knew Kaye both as an educator and a musician. The two met when Kaye moved to Brattleboro, where he joined the faculty of the Vermont Jazz Center as an educator. Uman is a pianist, and the two played about 200 gigs together.
“As a bass player, he was really tremendous. He had a really steady quarter note, and you could always rely on him to have good time,” Uman said. “He always would add his own creativity into a composition. He was always trying to make things groove and feel like they swing hard.”
Singer Linda Ransom and George Kaye at the Hotel Northampton’s Jazz Brunch in October 2018. Kaye, who died earlier this month, “leaves a legacy of excellence, readiness and openness to jazz at its freshest and most spontaneous levels of creation,” according to historian and radio host Tom Reney. COURTESY RUTH GRIGGS
“We’re gonna miss him a whole lot,” said Uman. “He was a strong personality, and he made a really great impact on our personal lives as well as our musical lives.”
Kaye’s sister, Maggie Kaye, wrote in an email that her brother “lived his last days as he lived his life. With courage, grace, complete commitment to those he loved and equally committed to the truth in every single in stance. He left us, listening to Miles [Davis] all day. Our hearts are broken but we are forever grateful for the time we had with George and for the extraordinary friends who loved him.”
Kaye is survived by his partner Maria de la Vega, his sister Maggie Kaye, his daughter Chelsea Kaye-Bidinger, and de la Vega’s children, Lisette, Nico and Alicia.
Carolyn Brown can be reached at cbrown@gazettenet.com.
