A wind duo for Bass Clarinet/Bb Clarinet and Bass Flute/Flute.

Thank you to Vanessa Parker and Isobel McKeeve for the amazing performance!

Pistanthrophobia is the fear of trust. I felt this was a fitting name for a piece about two people coming together after conflict. The piece begins cramped, uneasy and dismal, exploring the darker timbres of the bass instruments. As our pair find their footing, it expands into a wild and vibrant section where the instruments dance around each other, before calming again. As I wrote this piece, I considered my personal experience with relationships – platonic and otherwise – which allowed me to channel by thoughts and emotions into the writing.

Pistanthrophobia - for wind duo

Thank you to the Waldstein Quartet for the brilliant performance.

Fields was initially inspired by ‘Wheat Field with Cypresses’, a painting by Vincent van Gogh, after I took a visit to the National Gallery, London. The painting was completed in van Gogh’s hospital room, near Arles, France. It depicts a landscape being blown by the powerful Southern France winds. Instead of depicting these winds in my piece, I wanted to imagine the landscape both before, and then after a wind has blown through. You may pick up on folk influences and how the music is affected by, and portraying, the breeze. The quartet was completed after a trip to the Devon coast as it was being hit by Storm Noa, which came to be quite inspiring.

Fields - for string quartet

A sonic arts experiment where I recorded Debussy Arabesque No.1 on public pianos around London. I was drawn to the imperfections of each piano and how the changes in space affected the piece. The pieces were recorded using close and far Zoom recorders.

I’d recommend headphones!

Thanks to Anna Conroy for the performances! (perfectly played if not for some broken sustain pedals and detuned pianos!)

London Public Piano Project

A sonic arts piece.

In 2016, Age UK found that people who live in cities are
lonelier than those who don’t. This mirrors my experience
first moving to London and I wanted to write a piece about it.
I set out to record iconic sounds from around London and sounds that I would encounter on the daily. These consisted of the gate to my accommodation, the Thames, the Tube (and its stations), escalators, busses, traffic light spinners (very
noticeable at night!), pianos and many more. My piece just uses these sounds as starters.
A lot of the sounds were noise-based, so I focussed on texture a lot and combinations of sounds that worked together. I used automation to create ‘whooshes’ of sound (that I thought were like my memories of the day) and create momentum. I combined the use of tonal and noise sounds to avoid ear fatigue. The piece was created on Logic Pro X for the most part. I also
used Spear and Audacity to create new sounds. Vocoders, reverbs, extreme time-stretching and EQs were particularly useful to create pads of sound. I most enjoyed extracting tones from field recordings using EQ and using granular synthesis to create synth pads that sounded beautiful. I used Pentes, by Smalley, as inspiration, after listening to how the piece moves from heavily processing sounds, to slowly revealing a few of the original sources and environments. My piece uses a similar structure, using the sound of the gate (processed and raw) as a motif throughout. The gate also has symbolic meaning, as it I would exit it to step away from my reclusively. It becomes more literal throughout the piece to depict how, gradually, I felt less alone in London.

Lone.

I tried to think of an object that I use every day – an object that could produce multiple contrasting sounds, but also an object that is instantly recognisable. My white fold-up bicycle was the result of this search and I set to recording various sounds of the chain, breaks, wheel, bells and bag. I also sampled some unconventional sounds, such as recording the sound of the wheel spokes hitting against a pen. Every sound in this piece was originally sampled from my bicycle.
For me, this piece was about experimenting with the familiar vs the unfamiliar. The bicycle is very recognisable from its sounds alone, so I enjoyed contrasting the manipulated, unfamiliar sounds with the rawer samples. How far could I remove a sound from its original identity?

White Fold-Up Bicycle

Premiered at the Cutty Sark, London for the Trinity Laban Daryl Runswick Competition Final, New Lights Festival 2024. 

According to NASA, ‘Oumuamua is the first confirmed object from another star to visit our solar system. This interstellar interloper appears to be a rocky, cigar-shaped object with a somewhat reddish hue. The object was named 'Oumuamua by its discoverers. It means "a messenger from afar arriving first" in Hawaiian. 'Oumuamua is up to one-quarter mile (400 meters) long and highly-elongated – perhaps 10 times as long as it is wide. The observations suggest this unusual object had been wandering through the Milky Way, unattached to any star system, for hundreds of millions of years before its chance encounter with our star system.
 
As it moves slowly and steadily across the solar system, ‘Oumuamua hides in the blackness of space, sending faint signals to Earth, until suddenly it reveals itself to our detection systems. ‘Oumuamua is represented by a semitonal motif throughout, that builds into a final chordal sequence. The nature of this piece is generally slow moving, but sporadically interrupted by fragments of textures and melodies, like scraps of rock burning up in our atmosphere. It concludes with the cosmic interloper disappearing into space once again.

Conductor: Gregory Rose
Audio Engineer: Kit Venables

Flute I: Emma Colston 
Flute II/Piccolo: Mary Bull
Oboe/Cor Anglais: Lydia Brookes
Clarinet/Bass Clarinet: Clare Henley
Saxophones: Lily Skinner
Trumpet: Iris Rushbrooke
Trombone: Danny Sampson
Tuba: Lewis Chinn
Percussion: Jeremiah Beer
Electric Harp: Anna Pagnin
Violin I: Joey Lam
Violin II: Alma Zupan
Viola: Rachel Miller
Cello: Xiaodi Zhao
Double Bass: Sam Pugh

Artwork by by R. Kotulla (University of Wisconsin) & WIYN/NOAO/AURA/NSF, Licensed under CC BY 4.0
A_Familiar-Looking_Messenger_from_Another_Solar_System_(noao1706a).jpg

'Oumuamua

‘Oumuamua - for sinfonietta

April, 2024

For mixed choir, setting ‘A wondrous mystery’, by Jacob Gallus (1550-1591).

A wondrous mystery is declared today, an innovation is made upon nature; God is made man; that which he was, he remains, and that which he was not, he takes on, suffering neither commixture nor division.

Performers:

Soprano: Emily Linane, Ava Reineke
Alto: Eva Hutchins
Tenor: Charles Su
Bass: Harry Foster-Major

——

Original written for NCEM Young Composers, but completed outside of the competition due to time constraints.

He Remains - for mixed choir

for large ensemble, fixed media and dance

rude health festival of new music 2024

a piece about decision making

flute: mary bull
clarinet: claudia smith
trumpet: anna conroy
percussion: jeremiah beer
piano: euan mccandless
violin: joey lam
cello: katie harrison

composed/conducted: jack smith
choreo: stephanie angert
dance: stephanie angert, sadie bevan, liana-rosa dellapina

condition 1 - for large ensemble, fixed media and dance

Composer and Performer

jacksmithmusic.co.uk

Jack Smith

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