Hale Smith

Hale Smith

Biography

Hale Smith (29 June 1925, Cleveland, Ohio – 24 November 2009, Freeport, N.Y.) was an American composer and educator.

Mr. Smith studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music, graduating with a B.M. degree in 1950, and obtaining an M.M. in 1952. There, his instructors included Marcel Dick (composition), Ward Lewis (theory), Dorothy Price (piano), and Robert U. Nelson (calligraphy). In 1953 Smith's opera Blood Wedding premiered in Cleveland.

He moved to New York in 1958 and taught at C. W. Post College on Long Island, New York until 1970, thereafter at the University of Connecticut.

Smith was influenced while still young by the jazz styles of Earl Hines and Duke Ellington. Some of his music displays these roots. He composed music for orchestra, band, chamber ensembles, piano, chorus and voice.

His awards include the first composition prize of BMI Student Composer Awards sponsored by Broadcast Music, Inc. (1952), the Cleveland Arts Prize (1973), and membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1988).

He received an honorary doctorate from the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1988.

Works for Winds

• Abide with Me (as arranger) (1861/1993)
• Castle House Rag (as orchestrator) (1914/)
• Exchanges (1976)
• Expansions (1967)
• March and Fanfare for an Elegant Lady (1986)
• Riverain (1993)
• Somersault (1964)
• Take a Chance (1964/1965)

Resources

• Hale Smith, Wikipedia Accessed 20 May 2017
• Heritage Encyclopedia of Band Music. "Hale Smith." Accessed 20 May 2017
• The Horizon Leans Forward…, compiled and edited by Erik Kar Jun Leung, GIA Publications, 2021, p. 479.
• "A Tribute to Composer Hale Smith." Marilyn Harris. Web. Accessed 24 September 2021