Howie Smith, 1985 CLEVELAND ARTS PRIZE FOR MUSIC Born
in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, on February 25, 1943, Smith began studying
music at age five. At his first saxophone lesson, his teacher, J. Carl
Borelli, taught him an original tune and asked him to compose a new
piece by the following week. Nine months later, the talented youngster
made his debut performing in an amateur competition. Because the
saxophone was not regarded as a legitimate instrument for serious music
study when Smith graduated from high school, he chose to major in music
education, earning an undergraduate degree at Ithaca College and a
master’s degree at the University of Illinois. There, he played lead
alto sax with the renowned university jazz band and got acquainted with
the music of John Cage, Iannis Xenakis and other contemporary composers.
In 1973, Smith received a Fulbright grant to travel to Australia and
establish an innovative jazz program at the New South Wales
Conservatorium. During his five-year tenure, he also played with the
Jazz Co/op and presented a series of avant-garde concerts at the Sydney
Opera House. When he returned to the United States, he worked as a
freelance musician based in San Diego. In
1979, Cleveland State University named Smith head of jazz studies, a
position he held until 2005. During his first year on the faculty, he
gave a saxophone recital featuring himself as performer and
composer. The all-Smith program, “Concert in Progress,” became an
annual event lauded for its freshness, imagination and
unpredictability. Most of the concerts involved collaborations with a
variety of performers. Each featured solo improvisations. All
exemplified Smith’s preference for creating new pieces rather than
repeating old ones. Although
Smith writes eloquent program notes, he dislikes discussing his works,
preferring to let the music do the talking. His compositions often
incorporate non-verbal conversations. Schizerzo,
his whimsical miniature for sax and tuba, “is a genuinely funny piece
in which the two unlikely duet partners seem to be engaging in a
friendly argument, spitting notes at each other like little bullets,”
wrote Plain Dealer music
critic Robert Finn. In addition to humorous small-scale works and
daring performance pieces, Smith composes deeply emotional songs, such
as “Who Will Sing?”, a wordless meditation he wrote after watching
television coverage of the bombing in
Iraq. Smith’s
colorful sound palette combines conventional instruments with
unconventional techniques, synthesizers and tape. Keenly attuned to
acoustical space, he “plays the room” by moving performers around the
concert hall. Partial to “music based on simplicity rather than
complexity,” he brings classical structures to jazz and jazz idioms to
classical works. “Playing jazz and classical is like telling a
story in two different languages,” he told a Plain Dealer
reporter. “Jazz is from the African oral tradition, ever
changing. Classical is from the European written tradition,
unflexing. A performer should respect the traditions of an art.” —Wilma Salisbury |
Howie Smith glides effortlessly through
the contrasting spheres of jazz and classical music. He is equally at
home leading his own jazz group, playing in the woodwind section of the
Cleveland Orchestra, taking the solo spotlight or teaching a college
course. A tireless composer, performer and recording artist, he has
written more than 200 works, appeared on dozens of albums and played
with the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, numerous jazz ensembles and
superstars such as Dizzy Gillespie, Aretha Franklin and Elvis Presley.
“He writes jazz and contemporary chamber music, has worked everywhere
from Illinois to Australia and plays some of the sweetest saxophone you
will hear in Cleveland,” wrote David Beard in