November 04, 2010
Husband-wife musical team to teach, perform
CARBONDALE, Ill. -- A husband and wife musical team visit the School of Music at Southern Illinois University Carbondale for master classes, lectures, and a public performance of percussion-based music, highlighted with spoken text and “percussive theater.”
Sylvia Smith and Stuart Saunders Smith will be on campus Nov. 8-9, and will join the SIUC Percussion Group in a free performance at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 9 in the Old Baptist Foundation Recital Hall.
Here’s the rest of the schedule:
Nov. 8
• Noon-12:50 p.m. -- Master Class I
• 1-1:50 p.m. -- Composition Lecture I
Nov. 9
• 10-10:50 a.m. -- Master Class II
• 11-11:50 a.m. -- Composition Lecture II
Master classes and lectures are in Altgeld Hall, Room 112.
Sylvia Smith is the owner, editor and publisher of Smith Publications -- Sonic Art Editions, a company dedicated to promoting American art music. Not content merely to publish music, Smith insists her publication look good as well. The publishing house has six Paul Revere Awards for graphic excellence to its credit. In addition, Smith is a percussionist, with past performances including invitational performances at the Percussive Arts Society International Conventions. She earned the American Music Center Letter of Distinction in 1988, to name one of many awards.
Stuart Saunders Smith is professor of musical composition and theory at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, where he is director of the UMBC New Music Ensemble, and the director of Reds, The Improvisation Unit. His compositions fall into four areas of creative research, according to his faculty profile: inventing music of extreme rhythmic and melodic complexity, making “musical mobiles” in which instrumental parts freely interact, composing for spoken texts, and creating trans-media systems for performance art. Saunders Smith has earned many awards, including the National Endowment for the Arts Composer’s Fellowship.