Music
1 – Song of the Holy Ground (Smart)
for piano quintet
The Chamisa Chamber Players
2 – Lover (Rodgers-Hart)
Gary Smart, piano improvisation
Elevox Records
3 – Romeo and Juliet’s Farewell (Prokofiev)
Gary Smart, piano (live performance)
4 – Improvisation
for two radios and piano
Gary Smart, piano and radios
5 – There came a Wind like a Bugle (Smart-Dickinson)
from “The First League Out from Land”
Marilyn Smart, soprano; Gary Smart, piano
from CD “The Major’s Letter”/Albany Records
6 – Smoke, from “Passing Fancies” (Smart)
Guy Yehuda, clarinet; Gary Smart, piano
from CD “Hot Sonatas”/Albany Records
7 – Movement I from “Sonata in Fancy”
Michael Finckel, cello; Gary Smart, piano
from CD “Hot Sonatas”/Albany Records
8 – Nowhere Man (Lennon-McCartney)
Gary Smart, piano improvisation
from CD “Beatle Jazz”/Mastersound Records
9 – Drive My Car (Lennon-McCartney)
Mark Harris, baritone saxophone: Gary Smart, piano
from CD “Beatle Jazz”/Mastersound Records
10 – Trumpeter Swan (Smart)
for trumpet and string quartet
Britt Theurer, trumpet, with The Franciscan String Quartet
from CD “Fantasia”/Capstone Records
Notes on the recordings:
1 – This piece won the 2008 John Donald Robb Composers’ Competition,
which challenged composers to write a work based on a field recording
chosen from the Robb Archive at the University of New Mexico. My piece
is based on an Apache chant which consecrates holy ground. This is the premiere performance, given by the Chamisa Chamber Players at the Robb Composers’ Symposium at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, in March 2009.
2 – This Tatum-esque improvisation of mine won the piano solo category of the Elevox Jazz Competition in 1986. The studio recording was made for an Elevox Grand Prize LP, which celebrated Denver area jazz musicians.
3 – This recording is taken from as recital given at the University of North Florida Recital Hall in 2006. Prokofiev was known as an “infant terrible” of the early twentieth century, but his musical roots are firmly based in the nineteenth century romantic tradition. His elegant music for the ballet “Romeo and Juliet” is wonderfully melodic and evocative.
4 – I love free improvisation. For thirty years now I have made use of the “found material” available on the radio waves. Sometimes the results are
questionable, but at other times the chamber music collaboration between “man and machine” seems to me to be somehow quite meaningful, even transcendental.
5 – This is one of nine songs in my Emily Dickinson cycle. I try to paint the words with music. The East Indian influence seemed to just find its natural place in the music as I wrote. It is a surprising combination perhaps, Dickinson and Indian modality, and I’m pleased with the result.
6 – This is the first movement of my clarinet sonata, “Passing Fancies” (1984). The title refers to the old pop tune, Jerome Kern’s “Smoke Gets in your Eyes”, which is never stated, but appears in bits and pieces throughout this abstract, bebop-influenced movement. Though Guy Yehuda’s fluent, musical playing here makes the lines sound improvised, all the music is completely notated.
7 – Here is another third-stream piece, the first movement of my cello sonata, “Sonata in Fancy” (1982). I think of this music as an homage to both “Duke” Ellington and to jazz piano master, Bill Evans. Again, the music is completely notated here.
8 – This is a cut from my “Beatle Jazz” album on Mastersound. The modal
harmonies of the tune lead me further and further into polymodality and
polytonality and free keyboard gestures . . . and away from standard jazz gestures.
9 – This duo improvisation is also takem from my “Beatle Jazz” album.
The tune lends itself to this “fatback” style. Mark Harris – a Denver
area jazz artist – plays up a storm. His playing makes me laugh with delight.
10 – “Trumpeter Swan” (1990) was composed for my friend, Britt Theurer. It was inspired by a magazine article noting the gradual disappearance of the
regal trumpeter swan from the wilderness in the western US. It was a sad, nostalgic article and my rather programmatic music follows suit. At times the music is meditative, at times aggressive. At times it takes flight. Finally the music fades very slowly, as bird calls echo, ever more distant.