Bill Smith (jazz musician)
Encyclopedia
William Overton Smith known as Bill Smith, is a U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 clarinetist, and composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

. He has played with Dave Brubeck
Dave Brubeck
David Warren "Dave" Brubeck is an American jazz pianist. He has written a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke". Brubeck's style ranges from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother's attempts at classical training and his improvisational skills...

, among others.

Life

Bill Smith—also known as a "classical" composer under his full name, William O. [Overton] Smith—was born in Sacramento
Sacramento, California
Sacramento is the capital city of the U.S. state of California and the county seat of Sacramento County. It is located at the confluence of the Sacramento River and the American River in the northern portion of California's expansive Central Valley. With a population of 466,488 at the 2010 census,...

 and grew up in Oakland, California, where he began playing clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...

 when he was ten. He put together a jazz group to play for dances at 13, and at the age of 15 he joined the Oakland Symphony. He idolized Benny Goodman
Benny Goodman
Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...

, but after high school, a brief cross-country tour with a dance band ended his romance for the life of a traveling jazz musician. He gave two weeks' notice when the band reached Washington, D.C., and, encouraged by an older band member to "get the best education you can get," headed to New York.

He began his formal music studies at the Juilliard School of Music, playing in New York jazz clubs like Kelly's Stable at night. Uninspired by the Juilliard faculty, he returned to California upon hearing and admiring the music of Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud
Darius Milhaud was a French composer and teacher. He was a member of Les Six—also known as The Group of Six—and one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century. His compositions are influenced by jazz and make use of polytonality...

, who was then teaching at Mills College
Mills College
Mills College is an independent liberal arts women's college founded in 1852 that offers bachelor's degrees to women and graduate degrees and certificates to women and men. Located in Oakland, California, Mills was the first women's college west of the Rockies. The institution was initially founded...

 in Oakland. At Mills, he met pianist Dave Brubeck
Dave Brubeck
David Warren "Dave" Brubeck is an American jazz pianist. He has written a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke". Brubeck's style ranges from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother's attempts at classical training and his improvisational skills...

, with whom he has often played since, in both the famous Dave Brubeck
Dave Brubeck
David Warren "Dave" Brubeck is an American jazz pianist. He has written a number of jazz standards, including "In Your Own Sweet Way" and "The Duke". Brubeck's style ranges from refined to bombastic, reflecting his mother's attempts at classical training and his improvisational skills...

 Octet and The Dave Brubeck Quartet
The Dave Brubeck Quartet
The Dave Brubeck Quartet is an American jazz quartet, founded in 1951 by Dave Brubeck and originally featuring Paul Desmond on saxophone and Brubeck on piano...

, as well as other groups. In 1947, he composed Schizophrenic Scherzo for the Brubeck Octet, one of the earliest works that successfully integrated jazz and classical techniques, a style that later was given the name "third stream" by Gunther Schuller
Gunther Schuller
Gunther Schuller is an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, and jazz musician.- Biography and works :...

 (Mitchell 2001). He studied composition with Roger Sessions
Roger Sessions
Roger Huntington Sessions was an American composer, critic, and teacher of music.-Life:Sessions was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family that could trace its roots back to the American revolution. His mother, Ruth Huntington Sessions, was a direct descendent of Samuel Huntington, a signer of...

 at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

, where he was graduated with a bachelor's and a master's degree.

Winning the Prix de Paris presented Smith the opportunity for two years of study at the Paris Conservatory, and in 1957, he was awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome
Rome Prize
The Rome Prize is an American award made annually by the American Academy in Rome, through a national competition, to 15 emerging artists and to 15 scholars The Rome Prize is an American award made annually by the American Academy in Rome, through a national competition, to 15 emerging artists...

 and spent six years in that city. He has since received numerous other awards, including two Guggenheim
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...

 grants (Monaghan 1996).

After a teaching stint at the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...

, Smith began a thirty-year career at the University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...

 School of Music in Seattle, where he taught music composition and performance, co-leading the forward-thinking Contemporary Group first with Robert Suderburg
Robert Suderburg
Robert Suderburg is an American composer, conductor, and pianist.-Biography:The son of a jazz trombonist , Suderburg studied composition with Paul Fetler at the University of Minnesota, where he received a BA in 1957...

, and then with trombonist Stuart Dempster
Stuart Dempster
Stuart Dempster is a trombonist, didjeridu player, improvisor, and composer.-Biography:After Dempster completed his studies at San Francisco State College, he was appointed assistant professor at the California State College at Hayward, and instructor at the San Francisco Conservatory...

, from 1966 to 1997 (Mitchell 2001). Both Smith and Dempster are currently professors emeritus.

Smith has investigated and cataloged a wide range of extended techniques on the clarinet, including the use of two clarinets simultaneously by a single performer, inspired by images of the ancient aulos
Aulos
An aulos or tibia was an ancient Greek wind instrument, depicted often in art and also attested by archaeology.An aulete was the musician who performed on an aulos...

 encountered during a trip to Greece (Monaghan 1996), numerous multiphonics, playing the instrument with a cork in the bell, and the "clar-flute," a technique that involves removing the instrument's mouthpiece and playing it as an end-blown flute. As William O. Smith, he has written several pioneering pieces that feature many of these techniques, including Duo for Flute and Clarinet (1961) and Variants for Solo Clarinet (1963) (Smith [n.d.]), and he compiled the first comprehensive catalogue of fingerings for clarinet multiphonics (Rehfeldt 1994, 99–121). Smith was among the early composers interested in electronic music, and as a performer he continues to experiment with amplified clarinet and electronic delays. He remains active nationally, internationally, and on the local Seattle music scene as well, where in 2008, he composed, recorded, and premiered a "jazzopera" titled Space in the Heart (Anon. 2008).

Awards

  • Prix de Paris
  • Phelan Award
  • 1958 Rome Prize
    Rome Prize
    The Rome Prize is an American award made annually by the American Academy in Rome, through a national competition, to 15 emerging artists and to 15 scholars The Rome Prize is an American award made annually by the American Academy in Rome, through a national competition, to 15 emerging artists...

  • 1960 Guggenheim Fellowship
    Guggenheim Fellowship
    Guggenheim Fellowships are American grants that have been awarded annually since 1925 by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Each year, the foundation makes...

    (John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation 2010)
  • A Fromm Players Fellowship
  • National Academy of Arts and Letters Award
  • BMI Jazz Pioneer Award

Works

  • Concerto for Clarinet and Combo (recorded with Shelley Manne)
  • Divertimento, with Red Norvo, both on Contemporary
  • Schizophrenic Scherzo, for clarinet, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, trumpet, and trombone (1947)
  • Concerto for trombone and chamber orchestra (1959)
  • Duo, for clarinet and tape (1960)
  • Five Pieces, for flute and clarinet (1961)
  • Duo for Flute and Clarinet (1961) (recorded on MHS 3533)
  • Concerto for Jazz Soloist and Orchestra (1962)
  • Variants, for solo clarinet (1963)
  • Mosaic, for clarinet and piano (1964)
  • Random Suite, for clarinet and tape (1965)
  • Quadri, for jazz ensemble and orchestra (1968)
  • Chronos, for string quartet (1975)
  • Five, for brass quintet (1976)
  • Five Fragments, for double clarinet (1977)
  • Intermission, for soprano, SATB choir, and various instruments (1978)
  • Musing, for 3 clarinets and optional dancers (1983)
  • Illuminated Manuscript, for wind quintet and computer graphics (1987)
  • Jazz Set, for violin and wind quintet (1991)
  • Epitaphs, for double clarinet (1993)
  • Ritual, for 2 clarinets, tape, and projections (1993)
  • Soli, for flute, clarinet, violin, and cello (1993)
  • Five Pages, for 2 clarinets and computer (1994)
  • Duet in Two Tempos, for 2 clarinets (1996)
  • Explorations, for clarinet and chamber orchestra (1998)

Reviews

Eric Salzman wrote (New York Herald Tribune, March 14, 1964):
William Smith's clarinet pieces, played by himself, must be heard to believe—double, even triple stops; pure whistling harmonics; tremolo growls and burbles; ghosts of tones, shrill screams of sounds, weird echoes, whispers and clarinet twitches; the thinnest of thin, pure lines; then veritable avalanches of bubbling, burbling sound. Completely impossible except that it happened.(New York Herald Tribune, Eric Salzman, March 14, 1964, quoted in Rehfeldt 1994, quoted on William O. Smith, University of Washington faculty page)

Sources

  • Anon. 2008. "Composer Spotlight: Bill Smith, Space in the Heart, a Jazz Opera". Jack Straw Productions website (May) (Accessed July 16, 2010).
  • John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. 2010. "Fellowships to Assist Research and Artistic Creation: William Overton Smith, 1960, Music Composition", (Accessed July 16, 2010).
  • Mitchell, Ian. 2001. "Smith, William O(verton) [Bill]". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers; New York: Grove's Dictionaries of Music.
  • Monaghan, Peter. 1996. "Bill Smith: Fifty Years of Innovation". Earshot Jazz, no. 9.
  • Rehfeldt, Philip. 1994. New Directions for Clarinet, revised edition.
  • Salzman, Eric. 1964. New York Herald Tribune (March 14).
  • Smith, William O. [n.d.]. List of Publications. University of Washington Website (Accessed July 16, 2010).

External links

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