by Kile Smith | May 27, 2017 | Children's Music, Choral music, New Compositions, String Quartet
I Could See the Sky. For SATB, 2-part Treble Choir, Keyboard, optional String Quartet, 17 minutes (Treble Choir may be boys and/or girls or a few women) The editing process is usually severe. Many good things—music, text, both—are often left on the cutting room floor,...
by Kile Smith | Nov 2, 2015 | Classical music, Orchestral Music, String Orchestra, String Quartet, WRTI Arts Desk
[First published in WRTI’s Arts Desk 2 Nov 2015] Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings didn’t start out the way we know it now. In this feature for WRTI, I look at the inescapable strangeness of this work that is now one of the most heard and most moving pieces in the...
by Kile Smith | Sep 10, 2013 | Art songs, Broad Street Review, Choral music, new music, String Quartet
[Broad Street Review published an edited version of this 9 Sep 2013 as Composer’s challenge: From quartet to piano.] Having slid head-first into the double bar of the song cycle Plain Truths for baritone and string quartet, all I needed to do in the week before the...
by Kile Smith | Sep 1, 2013 | Art songs, Choral music, new music, String Quartet
The full score was finished last week. Yesterday, so was the piano reduction, and, today, the parts. September 1st deadline, why hello and let’s do this again sometime. Everything of the song cycle Plain Truths is now in to the musicians performing this new,...
by Kile Smith | Aug 26, 2013 | Art songs, Choral music, new music, String Quartet, Vocal music
I’ve hit the double bar on the expansion of Plain Truths, my song cycle for baritone and string quartet originally premiered in 2011. Randall Scarlata sings the new version in Newburyport, Massachusetts November 16th with the Newburyport Chamber Music Festival...
by Kile Smith | Jul 20, 2011 | CDs, Pop Music, String Quartet
My colleague AJay McLaughlin is the co-songwriter, along with Richard Bush, for most of the tunes of the Philadelphia rock band The Peace Creeps. On their new album Time Machine is the song “Cold,” for which they wanted to have a string quartet...
