Born in 1958, Keith Lay grew up in rural Wadsworth, Ohio. By the end of high school he had performed or conducted his own compositions for symphonic band, piano, jazz orchestra and chamber ensembles. After earning a Masters in Music Composition from the University of Akron School of Music, and recently a Masters of Education Media Design and Technology from Full Sail University, his career focused on university teaching, engineering and producing music and videos for record labels, education and commercial broadcast.
Keith won the coveted Riverside International Composition Competition in 2003, and was chosen as the overall winner out of over 500 submissions from the 11 previous years of that competition in 2004. This earned him a performance of a violin concerto, “On the Playground” at Lincoln Center which garnered a rave review from the New York Times, hailing him as ‘a composer to watch for’. Mr. Lay has thrice been awarded Full University’s top awards for excellence in teaching, and twice been awarded a United Arts of Central Florida grant, as well as a Florida Artist Fellowship, a Margaret Jory Fairbanks grant, and a certificate of appreciation from the National Recording Academy. His compositions have been released on CD by the acclaimed clarinetist Richard Soltzman, and performed by the Orlando Philharmonic, The Winter Park Bach Festival Chorus and Orchestra, the USAF Orchestra, the SW Kansas Symphony, the Riverside Symphony and the Warsaw National Philharmonic. Mr. Lay was key in designing Full Sail’s successful Music Composition online bachelor’s degree program. He is also a founding judge of Orlando Philharmonic’s Young Composers Challenge and a leader in the arts community in Central Florida.