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Date: Sat, 29 Jun 1996 23:59:14 +0100
To: i.shanahan@nepean.uws.edu.au
From: MC1628@mclink.it (David Keberle)
Subject: Bill Smith

Dear Ian,

Heres Bills Biography and a sample program that he will performing next week in Paris.
Im sure he would like to perform and lecture for you in Sydney.

I am looking forward to seeing your new piece for clarinet!

My temporary address in the USA is from 8/7:

David Keberle
P.O. Box 2011
Wausau, WI 54401
USA

Thanks.

David Keberle

********************************************************************************

WILLIAM O. SMITH

William O. Smith is internationally recognized today as one of the foremost 20th-century pioneers in
the development of new sonic resources for the clarinet. He began his innovating explorations in 1959,
the year his Five Pieces for Clarinet Alone became the first composition ever recorded to include a
multiple clarinet sound. In that same year he also realized at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music
Studios in New York the earliest work to combine a live clarinet performance with a recorded tape
made up of transformed clarinet sounds. A few years later, together with Paul Ketoff in Rome, he
assisted in the development of the first portable electronic synthesizer and clarinet microphone. His
catalog of over 200 clarinet multiphonics has remained since its completion in 1960 one of the most
accurate and frequently consulted sources of its kind by clarinetists and composers alike.

Born in Sacramento, California in 1926, he studied at the Juilliard School, Mills College, Paris
Conservatory and the University of California, where he received a Masters Degree. His principal
studies in composition were with Darius Milhaud and Roger Sessions. He has received many awards
and honors including the Prix de Paris, the Rome Prize, two Guggenheim Fellowships and grants
from the National Endowment of the Arts and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has
performed in numerous festivals and concerts throughout western Europe, America, Japan and the
former USSR. His music has been recorded by Columbia, RCA, New World, Contemporary, Crystal,
MJQ and EDIPAN.

~1~
Currently he is Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington, where since 1968 he has directed
the Contemporary Music Ensemble. In recent years he has also performed and recorded as a
regular member of the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------

A Virtuoso... Time Amazing... Musica Oggi

Fantastic... Saturday Review

...William O. Smiths unbelievable (literally) Variants for Solo Clarinet ... William Smiths Clarinet
Pieces, played by himself, must be heard to be believed double, even triple stops; pure, whistling
harmonics ; tremolo growls and burbles; ghosts of tones, shrill screams of sound, weird echoes,
whispers and clarinet twitches; the thinnest of thin pure line; then veritable avalanches of bubbling,
burbling sound. Completely impossible except that it happened; with that kind of playing who needs
electronic music? ... Eric Salzman, New York Herald Tribune

Smith is a man of prodigious talent both as a composer and clarinetist. ... Leonard Feather

An apparently inexhaustible imagination and a demonstrably limitless technique combine to make

Smith, for me at any rate, the most important jazz soloist since Parker and Gillespie. ... Jack Lucas,
Jazz Journal

*******************************************************************

WILLIAM O. SMITH
COMPOSITIONS AND IMPROVISATIONS

Alleluia for Clarinet and Voices (1996)

You are kindly invited to sing a line consisting of four notes which will be the basis for Mr. Smiths
improvisation. The notes are D, E, F and G with one syllable of A-lle-lu-ia for each note. Each note will
have a duration of approximately one minute. The attack of each note will be indicated by Mr. Smith.
Thank you for your collaboration.

Paris Imp for Clarinet with Computer-Generated Sound (1996) 1. Swinging, 2. Singing, 3. Slow, 4.
Lively

A computer and the performer improvise on a twelve-tone row.

Forest for Solo Clarinetist (1996)

The text is from the Zenrin Kushu (Zen Forest Saying Anthology).
1. This tune, another tune no one understands; rain has passed, leaving the pond brimming in the
autumn night.

2. Cry after cry after cry of joy not minding the hair turning white. 3. Chant poetry to your best friend!
Drink wine with your true friend!

~2~
4. The sound of a flute from the high pavillion scatters the full-blooming plum blossoms all over the
ground.

5. Practice, practice-thirty more years!

6. The music over, no one is seen: beyond the river, several blue mountains.

7.Thirty years later somebody understands.

All the Things you Are (Jerome Kern)

William O. Smith : <bills@u.washington.edu>

FFrom 10/7 28/7

~3~