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The American choral conductor and composer, Gregg Smith, began composing around the age of 17. Having heard Milhaud’s Suadedos de Brazil, he wanted to write a couple of South American piano pieces of his own. The result was a suite called From the Rio. Soon after, he moved to California where he enrolled at UCLA and also joined an amateur adult choir conducted by a fine high school director Jim Burt. He was very encouraging of Amith as a composer, trying out a few things of him with the adult choir and then performing two Keats settings with his High School group. It was while he was at UCLA that a young teaching assistant, Irving Becker, put him in touch with a great composition teacher for private study, Leonard Stein, who was a disciple of Arnold Schoenberg and did extensive work with the master during his last years in Los Angeles. The next four years were his great education in all aspects of music. He graduated with his Bachelor of Arts in Music in 1954 and subsequently received a teaching fellowship, which enabled him to pursue advanced studies. He went for a Master’s degree in Composition and had Lukas Foss as my major teacher. At the same time I became involved in choral conducting. A wonderful choral director at UCLA, Raymond Moreman, felt Smith had good potential as a conductor and got him his first choral position, a Japanese Methodist Church in West Los Angeles.
That church job gave Gregg Smith opportunities to write for the choir and, in fact, his Master’s thesis ended up a large work for small church choir based upon the Seven Last Words of Christ. It was during this time that he got his professional chorus, The Gregg Smith Singers, started when Mr. Moreman arranged for him to take a group, arrange and record music of Stephen Foster as a background for a TV Bio of that composer. They had a good success with the project and decided to stay together and have remained so ever since (1955).
Throughout jis composing life Gregg Smith was fortunate to write for specific groups or concert events. In the late 1950's he wrote several works for the Gregg Smith Singers including an a cappella suite, Landscapes, a whole album of Christmas arrangements called “Christmas Around The World “ for Crown Records, and one of my 1st major choral works, a Magnificat for chorus, brass and strings. He also wrote a Harp Sonata for a Los Angeles harpist.
In the early 1960's, Gregg Smith wrote a choral work for the Monday Evening Concert series, Secular Canticle for chorus, violin, oboe and piano. In 1961 he created another choral album, this time for Everest records - an American Folk Song record. In the same year he received a major contract from G. Schirmer and they subsequently published most of my Christmas and American Folk song arrangements as well as Landscapes. In 1963 he wrote the Bible Songs for Young Voices for the Texas Boys’ Choir. It was premiered at the L.A. Music Center. He then wrote a Christmas opera, The Other Wise Man for Chorus, Narrator and Chamber Ensemble.
In the Mid 1960's Gregg Smith moved to Ithaca College to head their choral program. The college gave him quite a few opportunities to create new works. These included the Festive Song for chorus and wind ensemble, Toccata del Rio for two pianos and a jazz Sanctus for the college jazz group and chorus.
In the 1970's Gregg Smith became a permanent resident of New York City. Compositional highlights for this period include Grand Palindrome in C for orchestra - premiered by the Brooklyn Philharmonic, a series of spatial Sound Canticles for the Gregg Smith Singers, a second Magnificat, this time for chorus, harp, six percussion and two pianos, three chamber works for soprano and 2-5 instruments and two works for soprano & large orchestra, Lullaby and A Time for Every Purpose. During the latter 1970's and early 1980's He also orchestrated and recorded five musicals of Victor Herbert as well as Gershwin’s Blue Monday.
The 1980's included an NEA composer’s fellowship, which resulted in a ballet for chorus and orchestra, The Continental Harmonist based on music of William Billings. It was subsequently recorded for Premier Recordings. He also wrote a Christmas work for Male Chorus, Harp & Strings commissioned by the New York Gay Men’s Chorus called Good Cheer and a work commissioned by the New York Treble Singers for women’s choir, soprano solo and violin and piano called To Reach for the Stars. At the end of the decade he received a commission from the New York State Council for the Arts to write a children’s opera - the result was Rip Van Winkle, a work that has had almost a dozen performances to date.
The 1990's were filled with many commissions as follows: The Mendelssohn Choir of Connecticut - Cantata on Chief Seattle text; Buck’s County Chorus of Pennsylvania - Gloria for 2 choirs and brass quintet; Long Island Symphonic Choral Association - 5 Psalms for Chorus & Brass Quintet; Syracuse Children’s Choir - Spring Songs for Children, Soprano Solo and Orchestra; Voices of Ascension of NYC - Shout for Joy- 3 Psalms for Chorus and Organ; NEA-MTC Composer’s Consortium - The Storyteller an opera for Children’s choir & winds. Consortium members: Cumberland Children’s Choir, St. Louis Children’s choir & South Florida Children’s Choir; Lycoming University, St. Peters Church (NYC), the Evergreen Chorale of Colorado, the C.W. Post choir, the Syracuse Children’s Choir and the Southern Illinois Children’s Choir of Carbondale, commissioned several smaller works. But certainly the most important work of the 1990's was a commission from the Cathedral Choral Society of Washington DC for which hew wrote a one-hour Earth Requiem for large chorus, symphony orchestra, solo quartet and children’s choir. It was the first of the William Strickland commissions, which are given every five years. The Washington Post said that the work was perfect for this inaugural event. In May, 2001 Earth Requiem was given 3 performances, including the New York premiere, in Long Island and New York City.
In 1998 Gregg Smith became composer in residence for Saint Peter’s Church, New York City and wrote seven choral works and two pieces for solo voices for them. An Easter anthem Seven Stanzas at Easter, based on an Updike poem which he wrote for Saint Peter’s in 1995 was published by E.C. Schirmers.
In April 2001 Gregg Smith's third children’s opera was premiered in New York with the Gregg Smith Singers and the Central Park East School. The Dream eater was commissioned by the Annenberg Foundation and is the culmination of five years of working in this very special elementary school in East Harlem. In response to 9/11/2001, he completed a choral setting of a poem of Nancy Murphy In Memoriam: Singing Our Sorrow at Ground Zero. This was premiered by the Gregg Smith Singers in November 2001 and received a fine New York Times review. In February 2002 the New York Treble Singers premiered his Jamaican Songs based on the poetry of Jamaica’s poet laureate, George Campbell. 2002/2003 brought the commissioning of Emily’s Autumn, a cycle of five settings of Emily Dickinson, for Nancy Menk and the South Bent Chamber Singers, which was premiered in the spring of 2003 when he was also awarded an honorary doctorate by Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana.
In 2005, Gregg Smith fulfilled two commissions: a setting of Thoreau, I fear no foe commissioned for the choir of Belmont Hill School in Massachusetts and premiered in April, 2005 and Songs from a Liberal Heart, an anthem for mixed choir and instruments commissioned in honor of Watson Bosler on the 25th anniversary of the Memorial Vespers at Saint Peter’s Church. The premiere was on All Saints Day in November 2005.
Recent awards: In 2001, CAmerica awarded Gregg Smith and the Singers the prestigious Margaret Hillis Award for choral excellence and in November 2003, the American Composers Alliance gave Gregg Smith their Laurel Leaf Award for distinguished achievement in fostering and encouraging American music. Most recently, at the Chorus America National Convention in June 2004, Gregg Smith was chosen to receive the Louis Botto award for Entrepreneurial Spirit, presented “for a lifetime of devotion to choral music and unflagging creativity in finding ways to bring it to a broader public, through outstanding performances, recordings and the preservation and dissemination of choral manuscripts.”
Gregg Smith wrote over 400 works large and small including about 50 instrumental works of varying types. About 100 of the 400 works have found their way onto recordings. |
