by Kile Smith | Oct 5, 2015 | Jazz, WRTI, WRTI Arts Desk
[First published in WRTI’s Arts Desk 5 Oct 2015] Two Englishmen, Guy Wood and Robert Mellin, slipped it into the Great American Songbook just before it closed, just as rock rolled over sophistication. It begins from below, a slowly twisting Roman candle of a tune, and...
by Kile Smith | Mar 21, 2015 | Art songs, Jazz, new music, Vocal music
In the Philadelphia Inquirer, David Patrick Stearns reviewed the first of the premiere concerts of In This Blue Room—the cycle setting four poets inspired by the batik paintings of Laura Pritchard—and in the Broad Street Review, Tom Purdom reviewed the second....
by Kile Smith | Mar 8, 2015 | Art songs, Broad Street Review, Jazz, new music, Vocal music, WRTI
[First published in the Broad Street Review, 3 Mar 2014, as Composing “In This Blue Room”] They thrill me here, the seagulls. Above the Beneficial Savings Bank building on Broad at Chew Avenue, a block north of Broad and Olney, they weave and mull over a...
by Kile Smith | Feb 28, 2013 | Chamber Music, Concerto, Jazz, new music, Orchestral Music, String Orchestra
The Three Graces Orchestral (original) version: oboe, horn, cello soloists, string orchestra. 11′. Full score Premiere of original version: https://kilesmith.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/threegraces.mp3 Chamber version: oboe, horn, cello soloists, piano,...
by Kile Smith | Dec 11, 2012 | American music, Jazz, WRTI
As much as I enjoyed writing about Dave Brubeck here, nothing matches sitting down with WRTI’s own jazz legend, Bob Perkins, to ask him for his thoughts on what Brubeck means to music. What a gentleman Bob is, and in Philadelphia, BP is jazz. Listen to my...
by Kile Smith | Dec 11, 2012 | American music, Jazz, WRTI
[Originally published at wrti.org]https://kilesmith.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/brubeckmix.mp3 [podcast of this article, with audio samples] In Jailhouse Rock, Elvis plays an ex-con rube hoping to make it in the music business. He’s dragged to a swanky party, where...
