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William O. Smith: Compositions and Improvisations

Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center
Seattle, WA

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**** FYI: we were just informed that the elevator at the Good Shepherd Center is broken and won't be fixed in time for this concert. The performance space is on the 4th floor. We apologize for any inconvenience. ****

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Presented by Nonsequitur

Described as a "man of prodigious talent both as a composer and clarinetist," William O. Smith has been straddling the boundaries of classical, jazz and improvised music for nearly his whole musical life. He even goes by two names: Bill Smith for jazz, William O. Smith for classical.

Smith was born in Sacramento, California, and began playing the clarinet when he was 10. He soon found himself equally divided between pursuits in jazz and classical music: leading a jazz orchestra and playing in a symphony; attending The Juilliard School and playing in New York's jazz clubs.

In 1946, Smith enrolled at Mills College in Oakland where French composer Darius Milhaud was on the faculty and Dave Brubeck was a student. Smith was part of what became the Dave Brubeck Octet, which emerged in part from Milhaud's encouragement. Smith handled many of the group's arrangements, and continued to perform with Brubeck throughout his career.

Smith went on to study with Roger Sessions at the University of California, Berkeley. After several teaching stints in California, he began his more than three-decade career at the University of Washington in 1966.

With a catalog of more than 200 published compositions, Smith has received numerous awards including the Prix de Paris, the Rome Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship and has performed and recorded with some of jazz's most noted figures. A writer reviewing his work for the UK's Jazz Journal remarked that Smith was "the most important jazz soloist since Parker and Gillespie." He's advanced classical clarinet technique and at the same time mastered a deliciously swinging style. He performs his captivating compositions with longtime friends: trombone master Stuart Dempster and clarinetist Jesse Canterbury.