*A*R**T Act, a setting of an erasure poem created by redacting elements from Article I of the PATRIOT Act, as performed by Volti Choir on March 8, 2014. Composed by Vid Smooke. Copyright © 2014 by Vid Smooke. All rights reserved.

*A*R**T Act

Vid Smooke performing "down.stream" for solo toy piano and looping pedal, at Opensound Boston, February 11, 2017.

Smooke at Opensound

"down.stream" for solo toy piano and looping pedal by Vid Smooke

Corrine Byrne, soprano, and Andy Kozar, trumpet (Byrne/Kozar Duo: https://www.byrnekozarduo.com/) premiering "All Are Welcome Here" composed by David Smooke, at Susquehanna University, November 28, 2017. The text is the title phrase sung in 16 languages.

All Are Welcome Here (Trumpet and Soprano) World Premiere

Couch's Spadefoot Toad, recorded in San Pedro Riparian Area, 3/25/19.

Couch's Spadefoot Toad

ComposerVid Smooke (b. 1969) currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland, where they are Professor of Music Theory, and teach rock music history and music composition at the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University, and were the faculty advisor for Peabody’s new music ensemble Now Here This. The Washington Post claims that “Smooke has some of the most uninhibited brain cells around” and describes their music as “superb […] a kaleidoscopic sonic universe where anything could happen”; the Baltimore Sun adds that it is a “fascinating experience in sound and content […] exceedingly imaginative [and] complex.” Their portrait CD, Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death was released in 2016 by New Focus Recordings and praised by the San Francisco Chronicle as “cast[ing] an eerie, unsettling spell, with sounds as haunting and strange as they are beautiful.” Their honors include the 2016 Johns Hopkins Alumni Association Excellence in Teaching Award, and those from the Maryland State Arts Council, the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, BMI, the National Association of Composers USA, the MacDowell Colony, Yellow Barn, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Willapa Bay AIR, and the Ragdale Foundation. They earned an M.M. from the Peabody Conservatory, a B.A. magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where they received the Century Fellowship, the highest fellowship offered by the Humanities Division. Their composition teachers have included Shulamit Ran, David Rakowski, Robert Hall Lewis, and Richard Wernick. In addition to these composition activities, Vid performs on toy piano with the support of Schoenhut toy pianos, has written extensively for NewMusicBox, the online magazine of the New Music USA, and produces songs under the name Video Out. Previously they served on the faculties of Ohio University, the Chicago College of Performing Arts of Roosevelt University, the Merit School of Music, and the University of Chicago.

Vid Smooke

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