Larry Alan Smith Celebrates Musical Achievements

Larry Alan Smith

This summer is filled with exciting endeavors for Larry Alan Smith, professor of composition, Hartt. In June, his music was performed in Iceland and Geneva, Switzerland. In July, he heads to Virginia for the 2011 Wintergreen Summer Music Festival and Academy, where he is the artisic and executive director. In August, he will be conducting and performing as a pianist at his inaugural festival in Sulmona, Italy.

On Saturday, June 11, David Grosgurin played the European premiere of Smith's Songs Without Words (2010), for solo cello, in Geneva. The U.S. premiere was at The Seasons Music Festival in Yakima, Wash., last October, featuring cellist Kevin Krentz. This work was also part of a dance score Smith created for Bowen McCauley Dance. The premiere took place at the Terrace Theatre of the Kennedy Center this past March. Choreographed by Lucy Bowen McCauley, the dance work included a reading by former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove.

Smith's Three Angularities (2006) received its European premiere in Iceland on June 22 at a lunchtime concert of new music for solo oboe. The oboist was Hartt Community Division alumnus James Austin Smith.

At the 2011 Wintergreen Summer Music Festival and Academy opening concert on July 8, the U.S. premiere of Smith's Concerto for Soprano Saxophone and String Orchestra will take place in Wintergreen, Virginia. Smith will be the guest conductor for this performance. This year marks his fifth year with the festival, which annually features more than 225 music, dance, theatre, film, visual arts, culinary arts, and wine events in 33 days. The 2011 festival runs from July 6 through August 7.

In January 2011, Smith, saxophonist Gaetano Di Bacco, and five citizens of Sulmona founded the Associazione Musicale Peligna, an organization that will support the arts in the Abruzzo region of Italy. Smith says, "This is the Italian equivalent of a not-for-profit designed to benefit the people of the Peligna Valley, where my family comes from, so this is a mission of love for me."

Settimane Musicali in Abruzzo ("Musical Weeks in Abruzzo") will take place from August 16 through August 26 in Sulmona, Italy, as well as other towns in Abruzzo and The Marches region. This festival features seven orchestra and chamber music concerts in this, its first year. "We are collaborating with other organizations in Italy, and there also will be a special tribute to an American composer (and my teacher and mentor from Juilliard), the late Vincent Persichetti, who also had Abruzzese roots," said Smith.