About

Kile Smith’s music, the recipient of three Grammy nominations, is hailed nationally and internationally for its strong voice, sheer beauty, and “profoundly direct emotional appeal.” He has commissions from The Crossing, Conspirare, Piffaro, Cincinnati’s Vocal Arts Ensemble, Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Chor Leoni, Helena Symphony, Choral Arts Society of Washington, Lyric Fest, Westminster Choir College, Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, Newburyport Chamber Music Festival, the Pennsylvania and iSing Girlchoirs, Choral Arts Washington, Choral Arts Philadelphia, and Gaudete Brass.

The Singing Guitar (Conspirare, Craig Hella Johnson) including Kile’s The Dawn’s Early Light with the L.A. Guitar Quartet and cellist Douglas Harvey, received a 2022 Grammy nomination for Best Choral Performance. The English Symphony Orchestra released The Bremen Town Musicians with Gemma Whelan, narrator, on CD. The Philadelphia Orchestra featured Bremen in their “Our City, Your Orchestra” chamber music series. Ave Maris Stella was commissioned and premiered by Piffaro, the Renaissance Band in 2021 with Variant 6. Ricardo Morales premiered There’s a Land Beyond the River, for clarinet and piano. The Arc in the Sky with The Crossing received a 2020 Grammy nomination for Best Choral Performance, and the Canticle CD by Cincinnati’s Vocal Arts Ensemble helped win the 2020 Classical Producer of the Year Grammy for Blanton Alspaugh. Hal Leonard publishes Alleluia, Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow, The Star-Spangled Banner, and I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day. A Birch in Winter included Kile’s Where Flames a Word and won the 2020 Estonian Recording of the Year for Voces Musicales.

Major choral works are heard in New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Dallas, Canada, England, and New Zealand. Gramophone called Vespers “spectacular” and Audiophile Audition, “easily one of the best releases of the year of any type… a crime to pass up.” Westminster Choir sang The Consolation of Apollo in 2022, continuing its run of over 50 performances. Ten CDs with his music have been released since 2018. Kile has also been performed by Seraphic Fire, The 24, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the Sofia Philharmonic, the Grand Rapids and Delaware symphonies, Orchestra 2001, and Network for New Music. Kile’s first opera, The Book of Job, co-commissioned by The Crossing and Conspirare, premieres in Austin and Philadelphia in the 2023/24 season. [Photo Credit: A. J. Waltz]

Longer bio here …

News

GRAMMY nominations
The Dawn’s Early Light. 2022 GRAMMY® nomination for Best Choral Performance, The Singing Guitar – Craig Hella Johnson, Conspirare, Austin Guitar Quartet, Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, Texas Guitar Quartet, Douglas Harvey, Estelí Gomez — Chicago Tribune Top 10 Classical Album, 2020 — WRTI Best of 2020 Album — Apple Music Featured New Album — Qobuz Grand Selection

The Arc in the Sky. 2020 GRAMMY® nomination for Best Choral Performance, The Crossing, Donald Nally

Canticle. Cincinnati’s Vocal Arts Ensemble, Craig Hella Johnson, helped win 2020 Classical Producer of the Year GRAMMY® for Blanton Alspaugh

Commissions
The Book of Job. Opera for bass-baritone and chorus. Commissioned by The Crossing and Conspirare, premieres 2023/24 season
New Work. Santa Fe Desert Chorale, 2023
New Work, Chor Leoni, 2024
Thirty Variations on a Theme of Bartók. Milena Urban, piano, 30th Anniversary commission by Community Music School, Trappe, PA
Ave Maris Stella. Commissioned and premiered by Piffaro, the Renaissance Band with Variant 6, Oct 2021. “Held the audience spellbound”—Broad Street Review. “Endlessly inventive … dramatic … three-dimensional gestures”—David Patrick Stearns
Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow. SATB, orchestra. Premiered Kennedy Center, Dec 2021, Choral Arts Society of Washington, D.C., Scott Tucker, artistic director
Sometimes It Happens So. Five-song cycle, the estate of poet Jane Flanders

Recordings
The Bremen Town Musicians, for orchestra. On the CD Fiddles, Forests, and Fowl Fables with Gemma Whelan, narrator, Kenneth Woods, conductor

Performances—recent & coming up (Complete Calendar here)
3 Apr. God So Loved the World. Grace First Presbyterian, Stan DeWitt, Long Beach, CA
9 Apr. Finished revision of Mazurka for guitar
22 Apr. Where the Mind Is Without Fear. Premiere. University of New Mexico Concert Choir, David Edmonds
23 Apr. Thirty Variations on a Theme of Bartók. Premiere. Milena Urban, piano, Community Music School 30th Anniversary, Trappe, PA
24 Apr. Mazurka. Premiere. Tom Clippinger, Guitar International Salon, Los Angeles
29 Apr. Kile Smith and The Waking Sun, presentation by James Higgs, DMA student, Choral Literature, University of Arizona
May. Kile Smith and April Showers, paper by Anthony Zogaib, History of Western Music, Case Western Reserve University
12 May. I Want to Write a Book of Praise from The Arc in the Sky. Chor Leoni and The Leonids, Erick Lichte. Vancouver, BC, Canada
12 May. The Consolation of Apollo. Westminster Choir College, James Jordan
13 May. I Want to Write a Book of Praise from The Arc in the Sky. Chor Leoni and The Leonids, Erick Lichte. Vancouver, BC, Canada
14 May. You Are Most Welcome. Nexus Vocal Ensemble, Lennie Cottrell, Portland OR
22 May. New arrangements for treble voices and harp of Psalm 113 from Vespers, and Monstra te essem matrem from Ave Maris Stella. iSing Girlchoir, Jennah Delp. Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph San Jose CA, 4:00
22 May. New arrangements for treble voices and harp of Psalm 113 from Vespers, and Monstra te essem matrem from Ave Maris Stella. iSing Girlchoir, Jennah Delp. Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph San Jose CA, 6:30
28 May. Sometimes It Happens So. Five-song cycle premiere, Benjamin Flanders, baritone, Nell Flanders, piano, Bryn Mawr College
5 Jun. Grandmother’s Garden. Gleeksman-Kohn Children’s Choir, Settlement Music School, Rae Ann Anderson. First United Methodist, Germantown, Philadelphia, 4:00

New Publications
Alleluia. SATB. Hal Leonard
The Bremen Town Musicians, for narrator & orchestra; for narrator & for violin, cello. MusicSpoke
Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow. SATB, piano. Hal Leonard
The Star-Spangled Banner. SATB, piano, opt cello. Hal Leonard

Featured Video

Where the Mind Is Without Fear. SATB, 4’30”. Text by Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), from Gitanjali (Song Offerings), No. 35 (1912). Commissioned by the University of New Mexico Concert Choir, Dr. David Edmonds, Conductor. Premiered by them 22 Apr 2022.