Today is the birthday of two notable Philadelphians.

Hershy Kay (1919-1981) is known mainly for his arrangements for George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet and for his work on Broadway. He studied at the Curtis Institute of Music, where Randall Thompson was his composition teacher and Leonard Bernstein a classmate. He started making arrangements to get out of playing the cello in pit bands. Along the way, he taught himself how to orchestrate.

The success of Kay’s orchestrations for Bernstein’s “On the Town” put him much in demand. He would later collaborate with Bernstein on “Peter Pan” and “Candide.” His work as an orchestrator can also be heard in such varied projects as Marc Blitzstein’s “Juno,” Cy Coleman’s “Barnum” and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Evita.”

For Balanchine he wrote the sub-Copland “Western Symphony” and the splashy “Stars and Stripes Ballet,” after Sousa. He also reconstructed and orchestrated works of Louis Moreau Gottschalk, resulting in the “Grande Tarantelle,” for piano and orchestra, and the ballet “Cakewalk.”

David Amram (b. 1930) has always been equally at home in classical music, jazz, folk and world music. He’s composed over 100 orchestral and chamber works, music for Broadway and film (including scores for “Splendor in the Grass” and “The Manchurian Candidate”), and two operas. He’s also written three books, with a fourth in the works.

He was raised on a farm in Bucks County, where he was introduced to classical, jazz and cantorial music by his father and uncle. He took piano lessons and experimented with instruments of the brass family, finally settling on the French horn. Following a year at Oberlin, he lit out for George Washington University, where he studied history. While there, he performed as an extra hornist with the National Symphony. He also studied privately with two musicians in the orchestra.

Amram became a pioneer of the jazz French horn, as well as the New York Philharmonic’s first composer-in-residence (named in 1966). He’s worked with artists ranging from Dizzy Gillespie to Bob Dylan, from Jack Kerouac to Arthur Miller, from Christopher Plummer to Johnny Depp. He’s a musician without boundaries, who has always been open to new experiences.

Happy Birthday, Hershy Kay and David Amram!

Kay’s arrangement of the “Grande Tarantelle”:

Some of Amram’s music for “The Manchurian Candidate”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4V0uQE-nRY

An octogenarian Amram at the Philadelphia Folk Festival in 2011: