Stuart Saunders Smith

Stuart Saunders Smith has composed over 200 musical compositions that have been performed at venues such as Carnegie Recital Hall, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Merkin Hall, Roulette, New Music America and numerous universities in the United States and Europe. Full-length concerts and retrospectives of his works have become common. Over a hundred of Smith's works are for percussion instruments with a special emphasis on vibraphone literature. His Links Series of Vibraphone Essays (1974-1994) is considered by many as groundbreaking music. Also Plenty (I-XXXIV) and New England are concert length compositions for vibraphone that extend the intellectual and emotional range of that instrument. Smith also has composed extensively for drum set, orchestra bells, xylophone, marimba, chimes, and multi-percussion. Stuart Saunders Smith's percussion-theater music forms the core of that literature with such pieces as Poems I II III, ...And Points North, Tunnels and Clay Singing. Stuart Saunders Smith is widely recorded with well over 80 recordings of individual compositions on such labels as New World Records, Ravello Records, Centaur, Innova, 11 West Records, O.O. Discs, Equilibrium, GAC, and Soundset Recordings. In addition, anthologies of new music have included his theater music, and music of rhythmic intricacy: Here and There, MacMillan Publishing, NYC; Return and Recall, Assembling Press, NYC; Faces, ASUC, NYC; and Transitions and Leaps, Mark Batty Publications, NYC. Articles on his music have been published regularly throughout the years in such journals as: Perspectives of New Music, Percussive Notes, Interface and ex tempore. Smith is the author of several articles on his music and others. He is the author of two books: Pathways through Twentieth Century Music, an anthology, Prentice-Hall, co-edited with Dr. Thomas DeLio; Words and Spaces, an anthology, University Publishing, co-authored with Dr. Thomas DeLio. In addition, he is currently writing Composing Thoughts, a book of experimental writings about esthetics, language, composition, listening, and religion. Part I of this book was published by Routledge Press, London and NYC, in February of 2014. Stuart Saunders Smith's service on the behalf of music includes organizing hundreds of concerts of new music, functioning as a lobbyist for the arts for the American Society of University Composers during the Reagan presidency, and as Executive Editor of Percussive Notes, Research Edition from 1982-1984. Recent concerts included a three-day festival of his percussion-theater music at the University of Maine in the fall of 2013 and a three-day festival of his vibraphone music by Berndt Thurner in Vienna, Austria in 2014. His awards and honors include three UMBC Research Grants, The Hartt College Distinguished Alumni Award, East/West Artist Award, three Maryland State Artists Fellowships, the National Endowment for the Arts Composer's Fellowship, Percussive Arts Society Service Award and the Atlantic Center's Master Artist Award.