by Kile Smith | Nov 29, 2017 | Broad Street Review, Choral music, Music Composition
[First published in Broad Street Review 28 Nov 2017 and reprinted by permission.] It was 2015 and I was staring up at another deadline. The art-song group Lyric Fest, with whom I was enjoying a season as their first resident composer, had asked me to write a work for...
by Kile Smith | Oct 8, 2016 | Art songs, New Compositions, new music, Vocal music
There Is No Great and No Small. Mezzo-soprano, piano, 3′. Text by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Premiered Philadelphia: 8 Oct 2016, the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, 9 Oct 2016, the Academy of Vocal Arts. For Lyric Fest’s opening concert of the 2016/17...
by Kile Smith | Jun 19, 2015 | Art songs, Choral music, new music, Vocal music
As 2014–15 Composer in Residence for Lyric Fest, the Philadelphia art song group, I wrote three works for them: Mark the Music, a Shakespeare song for soprano, tenor, baritone, and piano, In This Blue Room, a 45-minute cycle for mezzo-soprano, baritone, and piano, and...
by Kile Smith | Apr 13, 2015 | Art songs, new music, Vocal music
In This Blue Room is a 17-song, 45-minute song cycle commissioned by Lyric Fest on poems of Julia Blumenreich, Susan Fleshman, Siobhan Lyons, and Donna Wolf-Palacio, which are based on the batik artwork of Laura Pritchard. It premiered 13 and 15 March 2015 with...
by Kile Smith | Apr 13, 2015 | Choral music, church music, new music, Vocal music
The Heavens Declare, for SATB, SAB solos, piano, and optional audience participation. Duration about 4-½ minutes. Commissioned by Lyric Fest, Suzanne DuPlantis and Laura Ward, artistic directors, and premiered by Lyric Fest and Singing City, Jeffrey Brillhart,...