by Kile Smith | Apr 28, 2021 | American music, Classical music, Composition, New Compositions
Dear Jim, I didn’t know you well. That isn’t quite true; I knew you better than many other composers I know. I didn’t know you as well as I would’ve liked. Yes. That is true. It’s a hazard of the profession, not knowing other composers....
by Kile Smith | Dec 23, 2018 | Broad Street Review, Composition
[First published in Broad Street Review, 23 Dec 2018. Reprinted by permission.] Sports, sports numbers, and sports records consumed the attention of my youth, I’ll admit. If I’d known I’d be going into music in a few years, I would’ve applied myself more assiduously...
by Kile Smith | Aug 1, 2017 | Broad Street Review, Composition
[First published in Broad Street Review, 1 Aug 2017, and revised] This is the part they don’t tell you when they tell you about composing. This is the part where every start to your piece is wrong, every note is wrong, every page you’re staring at is false and mocking...
by Kile Smith | Aug 25, 2016 | American music, Broad Street Review, Choral music, Composition, Music Composition
[First published 23 August 2016 in the Broad Street Review, and reprinted here by permission.] We weren’t related, not any more than any other two random Smiths are, and I met him only once, but Gregg Smith, in three ways, made me a composer. Smith died in July at the...
by Kile Smith | Jul 28, 2016 | Broad Street Review, Composition, Pop Music
[First published in the Broad Street Review 27 Jul 2016. Reprinted here by permission.] There was work to be done at the top of the cedar, beaten by storms, and on the still-grand oak, but the main business for the professionals was the two flowering pear trees in the...
by Kile Smith | May 17, 2016 | Composition
The Greenville Advocate catching me mid-axiom at one of the events during my Greenville College residency last month. Reviewing my notes, I think this is when I said that everything you do is an audition for something else. Or when I was talking about my job as...
