by Kile Smith | Dec 23, 2020 | Broad Street Review, Classical music, Vocal music
[First published in Broad Street Review 21 Dec 2020 and reprinted here by permission.] About the best advice for composers I’ve heard comes from Mac Sledge, Robert Duvall’s washed-up country singer who finds redemption in 1983’s Tender Mercies. When word gets out he’s...
by Kile Smith | Oct 29, 2020 | Art songs, new music, Vocal music
Blue Lobster. Baritone, piano, 4′. Text by Jane Flanders (1940–2001). Commissioned by Benjamin Flanders. Ben Flanders sings in the Vocal Arts Ensemble of Cincinnati, so we’ve known each other since Craig Hella Johnson commissioned Canticle for them in...
by Kile Smith | Dec 16, 2017 | Baroque music, Choral music, new music, Orchestral Music, Vocal music
Vespers selections: (1) Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, (7) Psalm 113, (10) Magnificat, (13) Deo gratias. Re-orchestrated for the instrumentation of the J. S. Bach Cantata No. 1, Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern: 2 Oboes da caccia, 2 Horns, Organ, Strings....
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...
