low-keyed

The ensemble, Saturday Review music critic Irving Kolodin wrote at the time, began to make “a quiet noise in jazz circles, attracting attention not by flamboyance and flash but by a low-keyed tonal production.”

Seldom, though, has a guidebook to prosody ever been so sprightly, so much fun to read, with deeply knowledgeable insights gingered throughout with low-keyed humor.

“He was humble. You can see him praying. He’s low-keyed, peaceful. When he was praying, he was praying alone,” to the side of the small prayer group.

“I feel like it’s a whole team, and this couldn’t be done without all the other players,” said Wang, who in typical fashion low-keyed his contributions.

A low-keyed but irresistibly engaging stylist, Royle casually mentions that one of his own novels was awarded the Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award.