Wilma Smith (violinist)

Last updated

Wilma Smith (born 1956) is a Fijian-born violinist. She was born in Suva, Fiji and raised in Auckland, New Zealand. She has been concertmaster of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, and co-concertmaster of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in Australia from 2003-2014. She plays a 1761 Guadagnini violin.

Contents

Career

Born in Fiji, Smith studied at Auckland University and had an early professional experience with the Auckland Symphonia (now Philharmonia) and New Zealand Symphony Orchestra. She then continued her studies in Boston at the New England Conservatory with Dorothy DeLay and Louis Krasner, playing in masterclasses for many others including Josef Gingold, Yehudi Menuhin and Sándor Végh. Smith was the founding first violinist of the Lydian String Quartet, prizewinners at Evian, Banff and Portsmouth International Competitions and winners of the Naumburg Award for Chamber Music. Although the Lydian String Quartet was Smith's professional focus in Boston, she also worked regularly in the Boston Symphony Orchestra and led the Harvard Chamber Orchestra, the Handel and Haydn Society and Banchetto Musicale, a period instrument baroque orchestra.

New Zealand String Quartet (1987)

An invitation to form the New Zealand String Quartet took her back to Wellington in 1987 and she was first violinist of the quartet until her appointment as Concertmaster of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra in 1993. During her years with the quartet they toured New Zealand and Australia extensively and performed at the Tanglewood Festival. Prior to her departure for Melbourne, the NZSO honoured her with the title of Concertmaster Emeritus.

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra

Wilma Smith became Concertmaster of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) in 2003. The MSO's Chief Conductor Sir Andrew Davis has stated that, of all the performances of Ralph Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending he has conducted, Wilma Smith's was "unquestionably the most beautiful". He describes her as "an exceptional musician with whom [he] felt an immediate rapport". [1]

In June 2013 she announced her retirement from the MSO from the end of the 2014 season. [1]

Musical partnerships and collaborations

Smith has enjoyed a longstanding duo partnership with pianist Michael Houstoun, and since moving to Melbourne has formed the Munro/Smith/Berlin Trio with Ian Munro (piano) and David Berlin (cello) with whom she has performed regularly in New Zealand and Australia. In the last two years she has been a frequent guest with another Melbourne group, Ensemble Liaison, whose core is clarinet, cello and piano but who expand with other instruments to perform a widely varied and eclectic repertoire. The 2008 International Festival of the Arts in Wellington provided an opportunity for three concerts of chamber music collaboration with Steven Isserlis (cello), Melvyn Tan (piano), Houstoun (piano) and Carolyn Henbest (viola). The connection with Isserlis continued in 2009 with Smith's participation in his Open Chamber Music Seminar at Prussia Cove in Cornwall, England.

Teaching

Smith is also a teacher of violin at the University of Melbourne, and privately.

Personal

Smith lives with her partner, Peter Watt, a computer consultant and ex-trombonist, and their three daughters, Jessye, Rosie and Sophie.

Related Research Articles

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich is an American composer, the first female composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Her early works are marked by atonal exploration, but by the late 1980s, she had shifted to a postmodernist, neoromantic style. She has been called "one of America's most frequently played and genuinely popular living composers." She was a 1994 inductee into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame. Zwilich has served as the Francis Eppes Distinguished Professor at Florida State University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Adès</span> British composer, pianist and conductor

Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: The Tempest (2004), Violin Concerto (2005), Tevot (2007), In Seven Days (2008), and Polaris (2010).

John Harris Harbison is an American composer, known for his symphonies, operas, and large choral works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grażyna Bacewicz</span> Polish musician (1909–1969)

Grażyna Bacewicz Biernacka was a Polish composer and violinist. She is the second Polish female composer to have achieved national and international recognition, the first being Maria Szymanowska in the early 19th century.

Chen Yi is a Chinese-American violinist and composer of contemporary classical music. She was the first Chinese woman to receive a Master of Arts (M.A.) in music composition from the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Chen was a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her composition Si Ji, and has received awards from the Koussevistky Music Foundation and American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2010, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from The New School and in 2012, she was awarded the Brock Commission from the American Choral Directors Association. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019.

Musica Viva was founded in 1945 by Romanian-born violinist Richard Goldner, with the aim of bringing chamber music to Australia. The co-founder was a German-born musicologist, Walter Dullo. At its inception, Musica Viva was a string ensemble performing chamber music to small groups of European immigrants. By 2013, Musica Viva had become one of the largest chamber music presenters in the world.

The Clinton String Quartet is a string quartet based in the Syracuse, New York area. Active for over 15 years, their most prominent works have been the debuts of many 20th century classical recordings with the Syracuse Society for New Music. All four members are also members of the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra.

Margaret Brouwer is an American composer and composition teacher. She founded the Blue Streak Ensemble chamber music group.

Judith Gordon is a concert pianist and educator.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andor Toth</span> American violinist and conductor

Andor John Toth was an American classical violinist, conductor and educator with a musical career spanning over six decades. Toth played his violin on the World War II battlefields of Aachen, Germany; performed with the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini in 1943 at age 18; and formed several chamber music ensembles, including the Oberlin String Quartet, the New Hungarian Quartet, and the Stanford String Quartet. For 15 years he was the violinist in the Alma Trio. Toth conducted orchestras in Cleveland, Denver and Houston. In 1969, he was the founding concertmaster of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra under Neville Marriner. Toth taught at five important colleges and universities, and recorded for Vox, Decca Records and Eclectra Records.

Ernest Victor Llewellyn CBE was an Australian violinist, concertmaster, violist, conductor and musical administrator. He was the founding director of the Canberra School of Music and is commemorated by Llewellyn Hall, the concert venue at the School.

Dene Maxwell Olding is an Australian violinist. He has had a distinguished career as a soloist in Australia, New Zealand and the United States, performing over forty concertos in recent years, including many world premieres. He is the Concertmaster Emeritus of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, first violinist in the Goldner String Quartet, and a member of the Australia Ensemble.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jiaxin Cheng</span> Musical artist

Jiaxin Cheng is a Chinese-born cellist.

Oscar Ravina, born in Warsaw, Poland, was a violinist, violin teacher and concertmaster based in New York, who has had a prolific career as a performer as well as being a current professor emeritus at Montclair State University, where a talent grant in his name is regularly given to outstanding full-time freshmen studying string instruments.

Quartet San Francisco is a non-traditional and eclectic string quartet led by violinist Jeremy Cohen. The group played their first concert in 2001 and has recorded five albums. Playing a wide range of music genres including jazz, blues, tango, swing, funk, and pop, the group challenges the traditional classical music foundation of the string quartet.

Kristian Chong is an Australian concert pianist who has performed extensively throughout Australia, the UK, and in China, France, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, USA, and Africa.

Laura Anne Bossert is a violinist, violist, and pedagogue. She is a current faculty member at the Longy School of Music of Bard College and Wellesley College and, during the summer, the Castleman Quartet Program. She is co-director and founder of LyricaFest in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lark Quartet (ensemble)</span>

The Lark Quartet was a New York-based, all female string quartet that operated from 1985 to 2019. It is acknowledged for its distinguished contribution to the string quartet repertoire, commissioning new works from some of America's most celebrated composers. Most notably, Aaron Jay Kernis' two string quartets: Quartet no. 1 Musica celestis and Quartet no. 2 Musica instrumentalis, which received the Pulitzer Prize in 1998. The Lark Quartet served as Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 2004–08 and has recorded numerous albums on multiple labels including Decca/Argo, Arabesque, Bridge, ERI, Endeavor and Koch.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tanja Tetzlaff</span> German cellist

Tanja Tetzlaff is a German cellist. She played first as an orchestra member, but then as a soloist, a founding member of the Tetzlaff Quartet, a string quartet led by her brother Christian Tetzlaff, and as a chamber musician. She has recorded cello concertos and chamber music, including contemporary music, and has appeared internationally.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Diedre Irons</span> Canadian-born New Zealand concert pianist

Diedre Allison Irons is a Canadian-born concert pianist who has been based in New Zealand since 1977.

References

Wilma Smith bio at MSO web site