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Stuart Saunders Smith (16 March 1948 - 3 June 2024) was an American composer and percussionist. After having studied composition and music theory at three music institutions, Smith was currently based in Vermont, United States, with his wife Sylvia. He produced almost 200 compositions, half of which were written for percussion instruments with a focus on the vibraphone. [1]
Smith was born in Portland, Maine. He started studying composition and percussion at six years old with Charles Newcomb, who was previously a vaudeville performer and exposed him to many musical styles e.g. Latin music, waltz, Dixieland. Smith has attributed a "physical" form of music composition to Newcomb. From the age of 13, Smith began performing publicly in clubs and dance venues. At the age of 18, Smith went on to Berklee School of Music where he furthered his studies in counterpoint, harmony and musical arrangements. He continued to study percussion and composition at Hartt College of Music from 1967 to 1972. He received his DMA in music composition at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1977, where he studied under Herbert Brün, Salvatore Martirano, and Benjamin Johnston. [2] [3]
Alongside Newcomb, his other percussion teachers included Fred Budha, Al Dawson, Alexander Lepak, and Thomas Siwe. [1]
Smith has composed over 150 works. In categorizing Smith's work, four primary areas of focus have been identified: music of extreme rhythmic and melodic intricacy; musical mobiles with instrumental parts that freely interact; text-based compositions; trans-media systems for any kind of performing artist(s). Smith uses language (in the form of body language, melody and speech) as the core of each of these styles. [4]
Smith's percussion-theater music forms the core of that literature with notable pieces includingPoems I II III, ...And Points North, Tunnels, Clay Singing and twenty-six compositions of that genre. [4]
Smith has recorded with compositions on labels such as New World Records, Ravello Records, Centaur, Innova, 11 West Records, O.O. Discs, Equilibrium, GAC, Soundset Recordings, and Chen Li.
In addition, anthologies of new music have included his theater music, and music of rhythmic intricacy: Here and There, MacMillan Publishing, New York City; Return and Recall, Assembling Press, New York City; Faces, ASUC, New York City; and Transitions and Leaps, Mark Batty Publications, New York City. Articles on his music have been published regularly throughout the years in such journals as: Perspectives of New Music , Percussive Notes, Interface, and ex tempore .
Smith is the author of several articles on his music and the music of others. There have also been a number of articles written about Smith's music.
Perspectives of New Music
"Communications" by Stuart Smith
"A Portrait of Herbert Brün" by Stuart Smith and Sylvia Smith
"Visual Music" by Sylvia Smith and Stuart Smith
"A Composer’s Mosaic" by Stuart Smith
"Return and Recall (Improvisation – The First Step) at U. M. B. C." by Stuart Smith
"Notes on Stuart Smith’s Return and Recall: A View From Within" by Linda Fiore
"Aussie Blue (Day in the Summer in 1985) for Piano (Pianist Also Plays Triangle and Sings) Commissioned by Chris Mann" by Stuart Saunders Smith
"Against Definition" by Stuart Smith
"To Suffer Music" by Stuart Smith
"Showing and Saying" by Stuart Smith
"Inner-views: A Conversation between Stuart Saunders Smith and Tom Goldstein" by Stuart Saunders Smith and Tom Goldstein
"Stuart Saunders Smith's Links No. 6 (Song Interiors): How Can I Tell what I Think Until I See What I Sing?" by Ron Hess
"Interview with Stuart Saunders Smith" by Kristina Der
Percussive Notes
"Music Notation as Visual Art" by Sylvia Smith and Stuart Smith
"Focus on Performance: The Noble Snare – A Concert of Snare Drum Solos" by Brian Johnson
"Having Words With John Cage" by Stuart Saunders Smith
"Percussion in Discussion (Language, Percussion, and My Speech Songs)" by Stuart Saunders Smith
"Thinking On Tools – Touching My Trade – or – The Touch in Time Is Mine" by Stuart Saunders Smith
"Percussion Ecology: Doing More With Less – Music for a Small Planet" by Stuart Saunders Smith
"Against Definition" by Stuart Saunders Smith
"Showing and Saying (1994)" by Stuart Saunders Smith
"The Links Series of Vibraphone Essays: A Personal View/A Concert Review" by Christopher Shultis
"An Interview with Sylvia Smith on the 30th Anniversary of Smith Publications and Sonic Arts Editions" by Carrie Rose
"The Geography of Time: The Links Series of Vibraphone Essays (1974–1994)" by Stuart Saunders Smith
"The History and Significance of The Noble Snare" by Jason Baker
"Stuart Saunders Smith's Links No. 6 (Song Interiors) How Can I Tell What I Think Until I See What I Sing?" by Ron Hess
"Stuart Saunders Smith’s Ground for Solo Glockenspiel: Clear Complexity" by Rob Falvo
"Interview with Stuart Smith: On the Formation and Early Years of the PAS New Music/Research Committee" by Dr. Eugene Novotney
"The Silence… An Introduction to the Inner World of Stuart Saunders Smith" by Jose "Zeca" Lacerda
"Amidst the Noise: Stuart Saunders Smith’s Percussion Music" by Jeremy Muller
"Night Suite: Interviews with Stuart Saunders Smith and Berndt Thurner" by Rose Martin
Percussive Notes Research Edition
"Music Notation as Visual Art" by Sylvia Smith and Stuart Smith
"Interview with John Cage" by Dr. Stuart Smith
"Stuart Smith’s Links Series" by John P. Welsh
"Lecture by Dr. Thomas DeLio" by Dr. Thomas DeLio
"Scribing Sound" by Sylvia Smith
Percussionist
"Avant Garde Percussion" by Stuart Smith
"The Early Percussion Music of John Cage" by Stuart Smith
"Lou Harrison’s 'Fugue' for Percussion" by Stuart Smith
Interface
"Music in the Air Here and There – A Radio Landscape" by John P. Welsh
"Viewing Mobile Minds: Stuart Smith's Gifts" by John P. Welsh
ex tempore
"Thoughts of Stuart Saunders Smith on Quakerism, Trans-Media and Democracy" by Stuart Smith and Christine Humphries
"Family Portraits: 'Delbert (great-grandfather)' and Self Interview on the Thirtieth Year of Smith Publications and Sonic Art Editions" by Sylvia Smith
"A Composer’s Mosaic: Selected Entries from the Composing Journals of Stuart Saunders Smith (1985–1986)" by Stuart Saunders Smith
"Interview with Stuart Saunders Smith" by Jude Traxler
Smith is the author of two books: Twentieth Century Music Scores, an anthology, (Prentice-Hall, 1989), co-edited with Thomas DeLio; Words and Spaces, an anthology, (University Press, 1989), co-authored with Thomas DeLio. In addition, he is currently writing Composing, Thoughts, a book of experimental writings about aesthetics, language, composition, listening, and religion. Part I of this book was published in The Modern Percussion Revolution: Journeys of the Progressive Artist, edited by Kevin Lewis and Gustavo Aguilar (Routledge, 2014). John P. Welsh's The Music of Stuart Saunders Smith is published by Greenwood Press (1995).
Smith's service works on the behalf of music includes organizing hundreds of concerts of new music, functioning as a lobbyist for the arts for the American Society of University Composers during the Reagan presidency, and as Executive Editor of Percussive Notes, Research Edition from 1982 to 1984.
His awards and honors include three UMBC Research Grants, The Hartt College Distinguished Alumni Award, East/West Artist Award, three Maryland State Artists Fellowships, the National Endowment for the Arts Composer's Fellowship, Percussive Arts Society Service Award and the Atlantic Center's Master Artist Award.
When Smith chose the title "Links" for his ongoing series of compositions for vibraphone, he provided us with the most suggestive mode of biographical entry and subsequent inquiry, for his links are not only intra- and inter-compositional, but between and among his vocations as composer, performer, teacher, writer, anthologist, editor, entrepreneur, philomath, and musical activist.
When as a young man from Maine he ventured out into our hypercompartmentalized, ultrapluristic compositional society, he was disposed to be no one's follower, and so his music has displayed no more the explicit influences of the succession of strong-willed composition teachers with whom he studied and from whom he surely learned than that of jazz which he professes to be (or, at least, to have been) his primary musical influence. For he has forged a personalized seamless musical compound, a vast collection of awarenesses fused into a unified, single, and singular vision in which the individual sources retain little of their literal characteristics. (Milton Babbitt, quoted in Welsh 1995 , p. [ page needed ])
Smith has done very important and unique work in the fields of open-form composition and jazz. He comes to this approach naturally, for two reasons: first, as a percussionist he is comfortable with notation which diverges from the traditional mainstream in a number of ways; and second, as a jazz performer he is at home with improvisation. There is even a third reason, perhaps somewhat less obvious than these: because poetic consciousness is so fundamental to Smith, his musical thinking often results in compositions that seem to transcend music itself. This leads him to a view of artistic composition which is not tied either to ratiocination or to expression. It is not that his art is lacking in logic or in expressive effect but rather that its center of gravity is elsewhere. (Ben Johnston, quoted in Welsh 1995 , p. [ page needed ])
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