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Family Portraits: Brenda (1994)
| composer |
Stuart Saunders Smith (b. 1948) |
| performers |
Thomas Moore, piano |
| publisher |
Sonic Art Editions (BMI)http://www.smith-publications.com
|
| label |
oodiscs 31
|
| duration |
06:57 |
Stuart Saunders Smith:
"Family Portraits: Brenda is part of a large series of musical compositions portraying family members in sound. So far, the series consists of portraits of my wife, Sylvia; grandmother, Ivy; father, Earle; grandfather, Cubba; great-grandfather, Delbert; and Mom and Dad together. My cousin, Brenda, is full of openness and light, but underneath she is hurled about by a mood disorder that gives her highs and lows of enormous power and calamity."
The music of Stuart Saunders Smith (b. 1948) is deeply rooted in the people and geography of Maine and shaped by the composer's strong feeling for the communal creative spirit and improvisational techniques of jazz. Smith has created a diverse and unusual body of work featuring varying combinations of instruments, voices, electronics, poetry, and theater.
Born in Portland, Maine, Smith learned to play drums at the age of six and eventually specialized in jazz. He studied at the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut with Edward Diemente, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with Herbert Brün, Ben Johnston, and Salvatore Martirano. Smith has taught at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida, Institute for New Music in Darmstadt, Germany, and since 1975 at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he directs the school's new music and improvisation ensembles. His honors include the East/West Artist Award, Maryland State Artists Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Composer's Fellowship, and Pittsburgh Film Forum Grant. Smith's music has been recorded on the Capstone, Centaur, Equilibrium, and oodiscs labels, and performed throughout North America and Europe as well as in Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.
related websites
http://www.umbc.edu/music/site/faculty/smith.html
Thomas Moore's repertoire includes major works by John Cage, George Crumb, Morton Feldman, Robert Gibson, Philip Glass, Charles Ives, Olivier Messiaen, Erik Satie, Stuart Saunders Smith, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Christian Wolff, Iannis Xenakis, and many others. In 1982 he won the Grand Prize of the International Piano Recording Competition for his recording of George Crumb's Makrokosmos, Volume I. A respected interpreter of the music of John Cage, Moore has been featured in several major Cage festivals. In the 1970's and 1980's, Moore produced weekly programs on new music for public radio stations in the Baltimore-Washington area, featuring interviews with many major composers of the time; his conversations John Cage and Morton Feldman were published in Sonus and Perspectives of New Music. In recent years Moore has collaborated with choreographer Robert Ellis Dunn, poet and essayist Joan Retallack, percussionist Tom Goldstein, visual artist Bill Seaman, and composer Andrew Culver. Moore is currently the Director of Arts and Culture Advancement at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. In 1998 he received an individual artist grant from the Maryland State Arts Council and a citation for his work from the governor of Maryland.
related websites
http://research.umbc.edu/~tmoore/music.html
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