Kennedy dies at 80; musician was virtuoso on the violin

RICHMOND (AP) — Joseph J. Kennedy Jr., a violin virtuoso who straddled the musical worlds of jazz and classical, died on Saturday. He was 80.

Mr. Kennedy was the retired director of jazz studies at Virginia Tech and one of the first black members of the Richmond Symphony when he joined in 1963. He was the symphony’s resident violinist for nearly two decades.

In interviews, he often credited a musical family for encouraging his varied interests.

“We had all sorts of recordings in my home when I was a kid growing up,” Mr. Kennedy said in a 1989 Richmond Times-Dispatch profile. “I was exposed to folk music, classical music, Negro spirituals, jazz. When I went to the Army in World War II, I found it easy to concentrate on jazz.”

“He has been playing since he was three years old,” Thelma Marion Copeland Kennedy said yesterday of her late husband. “His grandfather started him on the mandolin.”

Mr. Kennedy performed with the Camp Lee Symphony Orchestra in Petersburg while in the Army. Later, he studied at Carnegie Mellon University and earned a degree from what is now Virginia State University. He also held a master’s in music education from Duquesne University in his native Pittsburgh.

He balanced his duties as an educator with his life as a performer, composer and arranger, traveling the world to appear at many of the top jazz festivals, including the Monterey Jazz Festival, the New York Kool Jazz Festival, the Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice, France, and the Birmingham, England, International Jazz Festival.

He recorded and performed with childhood friend Ahmad Jamal, for whom he was also a string arranger. He also worked with mentor and relative Benny Carter, longtime friend Billy Taylor, John Lewis and the Heath Brothers — as well as his own quartets.

Friend Doug Richards, director of the Great American Music Ensemble and a Virginia Commonwealth University professor, said Mr. Kennedy was a quiet gentleman with an often understated musical manner, “but he swung ferociously.”

“He was one of the rare people put on this earth to teach the rest of us how to live,” Mr. Richards said. “He was truly one of the great jazz violinists of all time, and we were blessed to have him in this community.”

Mrs. Kennedy said a memorial service would be held in the summer.