Gabriella Smith (born December 26, 1991) is an American composer from Berkeley, California.
Gabriella Smith was born December 26, 1991, in Berkeley, California. [2] As a teenager, she was very interested in biology, ecology, and conservation, and she spent five years volunteering on a songbird research project in Point Reyes, California. [3] [4]
Smith began learning the violin at age seven and began composing soon thereafter. [3] Later, she was mentored by John Adams as a part of his Young Composers Program in Berkeley. [5] She received her Bachelors of Music in composition from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 2013 where she studied with David Ludwig. [6] [7] She attended Princeton University for graduate school [7] and has since been living in Marseille, France; [8] Oslo, Norway; and Seattle, USA. [7]
Smith enjoys hiking, backpacking, birding, and making underwater recordings with a hydrophone. [7]
Smith's works have been performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Roomful of Teeth, Eighth Blackbird, Bang on a Can All Stars, the Nashville Symphony, YMusic, Aizuri Quartet, Attacca Quartet, Dover Quartet, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, PRISM Quartet, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, and others. [7]
Her piece Tumblebird Contrails was commissioned by the Pacific Harmony Foundation and premiered in 2014 by the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, conducted by Marin Alsop. [9] In January 2019, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by John Adams, performed the piece as part of its centennial season. [10]
Her string quartet Carrot Revolution was written in 2015 for the Aizuri Quartet, having been commissioned by the Barnes Foundation for their exhibition The Order of Things. In November 2019, it was performed by members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic as a part of their Green Umbrella concert series. [5] [11]
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra commissioned Gabriella Smith, as part of their 125th Anniversary season, ƒ(x) = sin²x - 1/x. It was first performed in September 2019, conducted by Eun Sun Kim. Music Program Notes, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, April 2021, when Carrot Revolution, adapted for string ensemble, was performed.
The Curtis Symphony Orchestra commissioned a work from Smith, set to be performed on its domestic tour in January–February 2020, culminating in a performance in Carnegie Hall, conducted by Osmo Vänskä [6] [12]
Smith's 2019 composition Bioluminescence Chaconne had its world premiere with the Oregon Symphony in Portland on February 8, 2020. [13]
Her organ concerto Breathing Forests was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic for organist James McVinnie and premiered in February 2022 by LA Phil and James McVinnie, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. [14]
Smith has received a BMI Student Composer Award (2018), an ASCAP Leo Kaplan Award (2014), three ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Awards, and the Theodore Presser Foundation Music Award (2012). She has also won the 2015 American Modern Ensemble Composition Competition and the 2009 Pacific Musical Society Composition Competition. [7]
Source: [15]
Source: [16]
Source: [17]
Source: [18]
In 2021, her debut album Lost Coast in collaboration with cellist Gabriel Cabezas was released on the Icelandic record label Bedroom Community, produced by violist Nadia Sirota and recorded at Greenhouse Studios in Reykjavík in 2019. [19] [20] [21]
Mark-Anthony Turnage is an English composer of contemporary classical music.
Erkki-Sven Tüür is an Estonian composer.
John Harris Harbison is an American composer and academic.
James Dillon is a Scottish composer who is often regarded as belonging to the New Complexity school. Dillon studied art and design, linguistics, piano, acoustics, Indian rhythm, mathematics and computer music, but is self-taught in composition.
Sean Hickey is an American composer and record label executive, born in 1970 in Detroit, Michigan, and based in Brooklyn, New York for decades. In 2022, he was appointed Managing Director of Pentatone.
David Horne is a Scottish composer, pianist, and teacher.
David Frederick Stock was an American composer and conductor.
Gary Alan Kulesha is a Canadian composer, pianist, conductor, and educator. Since 1995, he has been Composer Advisor to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He has been Composer-in-Residence with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony (1988–1992) and the Canadian Opera Company (1993–1995). He was awarded the National Arts Centre Orchestra Composer Award in 2002.
Marti Epstein is an American composer. She is Professor of Composition at Berklee College of Music and the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
Benjamin Yusupov is a classical composer, conductor and pianist.
Anna Clyne is an English composer resident in the USA. She has worked in both acoustic music and electroacoustic music.
Derrick Skye is a composer, conductor, musician, and educator based in the Los Angeles area who often integrates musical practices from cultures around the world in his works. The Los Angeles Times has described Skye's music as "something to savor" and "enormous fun to listen to." The Times (London) described Skye’s music as “deliciously head-spinning.”
Allan Gordon Bell, is a Canadian contemporary classical composer.
Jonatan Sersam is a Swedish composer and pianist. His music has been performed by Malmö Symfoniorkester, Helsingborgs Symfoniorkester, ensemble ICTUS, Schallfeld Ensemble, Ensemble Zeitfluss, Ensemble FontanaMix, Norrköpings Symfoniorkester, Swedish Wind Ensemble, Marco Fusi, Ruído Vermelho, Musica Vitae and the Kreutzer Quartet among others. Sersam was awarded Saltöstftelsens Tonsättarstipendium 2023 for his piece Presencia de Sombra for bass viol, cello and soprano
Sean Friar is an American composer and pianist. He currently lives in Denver, Colorado.
Angélica Negrón is a Puerto-Rican composer and multi-instrumentalist recognized for composing music for accordions, robotic instruments, toys, and electronics, as well as for chamber ensembles, orchestras, choirs, and films. Negrón is a founding member of the electronic indie band Balún, where she sings and plays the accordion. She is based in Brooklyn, New York, where she is a teaching artist for New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composers program and Lincoln Center Education.
Freya Waley-Cohen is a British-American composer based in London.
Zhou Tian is a Chinese-American composer of contemporary classical music. His Concerto for Orchestra received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Contemporary Classical Composition in 2018, making him the first Chinese-born composer and the second Asian composer honored in that category. His composition have been performed by performers and orchestras such as Jaap Van Zweden, Yuja Wang, Manfred Honeck, Long Yu, the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, London Philharmonic, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, “The President's Own” United States Marine Band, and Shanghai Symphony, where he served as the Artist-in-Residence. In 2019, thirteen symphony orchestras commissioned his composition “Transcend” in honor of the 150th anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad's completion. In 2022, he received the Sousa-ABA-Ostwald Award from the American Bandmasters Association for Sinfonia, becoming the first Asian-American winner in the award's 66-year history.