by Kile Smith | Apr 30, 2018 | American music, Classical music, Fleisher Collection, String Orchestra, WRTI
We keep one composer and swap out two from last month’s American Romantics program on Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection. The two new composers are two Arthurs—Bird and Foote—and we’ll hear music they first wrote for other purposes. Arthur Foote’s Theme and...
by Kile Smith | Apr 2, 2018 | American music, Classical music, Fleisher Collection, Radio, WRTI
On Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection, Saturday, April 7th, 5–6 pm… The history of a musical era is as difficult to capture as the history of a house. If your house was built in, say, 1880, you might fill it with Victorian furniture and feel satisfied with...
by Kile Smith | Mar 7, 2018 | Broad Street Review, Chamber Music, Fleisher Collection, new music
A tune came to me one morning as I walked down the hallway, about to turn the 180 degrees into the stairwell leading up to the third floor. That’s where I compose. I mention the tune coming to me because it hardly ever happens. It may happen to other composers, but...
by Kile Smith | Feb 26, 2018 | Classical music, Fleisher Collection, Radio, WRTI
On Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection, Saturday March 3rd, 5:00 to 6:00 pm… It’s been said that Edwin Fleisher did not like vocal or choral music. Whether a few people have told me this, or one person told me a few times, I can’t recall, but it explained...
by Kile Smith | Feb 24, 2018 | Choral music, church music, liturgical music
For unison congregation, organ, and optional cantor and optional descant. The Association of Anglican Musicians commissioned me to write music for the Closing Eucharist of their National Conference in Philadelphia, June 17–22, 2012. The Mass for Philadelphia was first...
by Kile Smith | Feb 15, 2018 | Choral music, Spirituality
[George Case and Boston Cecilia asked me to contribute to their blog in the run-up to their 11 Mar 2018 concert of Canticle. This is what I wrote, slightly edited.] Saints bless the world, even when the world doesn’t know it. Saints who write, though, speak to the...
by Kile Smith | Feb 2, 2018 | Anthem, Choral music, church music
SATB, organ. Moderately easy. Original tune with spare harmonies; an early American sound that recalls shape-note singing. Composed 1982, revised 2003. See and hear the entire work here. Come to Calvary’s holy mountain, Sinners, ruined by the fall; Here a pure and...
