version for three violins and voice on fixed media
Mia Detwiler, violin
J. Andrew Smith, voice

By this art you may contemplate the variation of the 23 letters…
Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. 2, Sec. II, Mem. IV

“The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries. In the center of each gallery is a ventilation shaft, bounded by a low railing. From any hexagon one can see the floors above and below-one after another, endlessly. The arrangement of the galleries is always the same: twenty bookshelves, five to each side, line four of the hexagon's six sides; the height of the bookshelves, floor to ceiling, is hardly greater than the height of a normal librarian. […] Each wall of each hexagon is furnished with five bookshelves; each bookshelf holds thirty-two books identical in format; each book contains four hundred ten pages; each page, forty lines; each line, approximately eighty black letters. There are also letters on the front cover of each book; those letters neither indicate nor prefigure what the pages inside will say. […] First: The Library has existed ab eternitate. […] Second: There are twenty-five orthographic symbols.”
 (Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel, Collected Fictions. Trans. Andrew Hurley. New York: Penguin, 1998.)

This piece embodies the concept of self-organized music that is central to my esthetic principles together with the idea that artists and their audience are active co-creators of the artistic event. These two principles have now found an evolutionary path in the conceptualization of networks as entities that bridge Science, Art and Society, a vison that has become the foundation of my artistic and music-theoretic research. In this piece (whose final title will be decided also by the performers), every aspect of the performance is defined by three key elements: a network of nodes with a specific connection topology, the determination of the optimal path that visits every link connecting any node at least once and the individual interpretation that the performers give of every node (each node contains specific instructions on the musical gesture to be performed). The resulting music emerges from the collective actions of the musicians as an experiment in cooperative, complexity-motivated musical creation.

Helefini otea agoninisconi

Arbitrary/Peremptory is a collaboration with visual artist and librettist Sean Lopez written for his show Always Girls and Forever Boys. Arbitrary/Peremptory combines autobiographical experiences from both of us and amalgamates them together into a fragmented and obscured narrative that holds parts of each of us. The voice in this piece is represented in multitudes and multiplicities, comprising not only the live performer, but also the entirety of the electronics. The computer and the voice are closely tied together and respond to one another; as the computer listens and reacts to the performer, the performer does the same. 

The narrative of this piece centers around an unnamed character full of contradictions, embodying strength and weakness, child and adult, divine and mortal, grief and joy. The primary narrative thread of this character centers around a grieving and abused child, attempting to deal with the dramatic and painful loss of his grandmother. We see him as he experiences the grief of loss, the pain of oppression and confinement, the trauma of violence and conflict, and the darkness of isolation. We see him attempt to transcend his circumstances, his pain, and even his human body.

Performed and Composed by J. Andrew Smith
Libretto and Scene by Sean Lopez
This piece was a finalist for the 2022 ASCAP/SEAMUS Student Commission Competition.

Arbitrary/Peremptory

14 years
chamber ensemble and electronics

members of eighth blackbird:
Timothy Munro, alto flute
Michael Maccaferri, clarinet
Yvonne Lam, violin
Nicholas Photinos, cello

World premiere recording, November 7, 2014 at the Third Practice Electroacoustic Music Festival, Camp Concert Hall, University of Richmond.

The day after my senior recital at the University of Richmond in 2001, I went to the Richmond SPCA and adopted a dog I had been visiting for a few weeks.  They named her Lucy at the shelter, and I kept the name, though I made a silly excuse that her full name was "Lucinda", after Lucinda Williams, one of my favorite songwriters.

Lucy was with me for almost 14 years, moving around the country with me, from Richmond to Bowling Green, Ohio, Gainesville, FL, and finally to Columbus, GA, through all of my schooling as a composer and my first job as a professor.  She really was my best friend, and at times, my only friend.

Lucy was diagnosed with bone cancer in August of 2014, and on September 3, x-rays showed the cancer had spread to her lungs.  That day, I had to say goodbye, so she wouldn't suffer any longer.  She had already lost use of one of her legs, and though she was still affectionate and still liked laying in the sun in the yard, she had lost interest in her food and spent most of her time hiding in the cubbyhole in my little upstairs apartment.

This piece is my piece for my Lucy, my oldest friend.  I miss her -- from the first days chasing raccoons at Honey Tree to her last few weeks riding around Columbus in a golf cart, she brought joy and companionship to my life when I needed it the most.  Though it was a difficult piece to write, and to hear played by such amazing musicians, I am especially humbled and grateful to the people who came to hear the piece played -- in Richmond, where Lucy was born, with people from every part of my life in the audience -- from UR, BGSU, UF, CSU, and my parents and friends.  

Please donate to your local SPCA, and go and visit the animals up for adoption there.  Everyone needs a Lucy in their life!

14 Years

Rough Cut of "Helter Skelter" from the forthcoming CSU Popular Music Ensemble CD, where the band collaborates with members of the Columbus music community.

Clara Vargas, vocals
Dan Murray, vocals
Jordan Manley, drums
Zac Young, guitar
Nick Fiveash, guitar
David Baker, bass
Dr. McCabe, Wurlitzer

Engineering by Jordan Walsh, Wyndhem Ennaemba, and Dr. McCabe
Recorded, mixed, and mastered at the Loft Recording Studio, Columbus, GA.

CSU PME w/Members of Stereomonster - Helter Skelter - Rough Mix

Thrill is Gone (Rough Mix #1)
The Columbus State University Popular Music Ensemble
featuring Lloyd Buchanan and Neal Lucas
from the forthcoming PME album

Lloyd Buchanan, vocals, organ, piano
Neal Lucas, guitar
Nick Fiveash, guitar
Matthew McCabe, bass
Dan Murray, drums
Cameron Dale, percussion

Thrill Is Gone - CSU PME with Lloyd Buchanan and Neal Lucas

Contemplating Larry (2015)
i. Articulations
ii. Drones
iii. Portraits

Contemplating Larry presents an abstract “portrait” of composer Larry Austin.
The piece was created exclusively from samples of Larry’s compositions, which span fifty-five years and numerous mediums. None of the samples were reprocessed; they are all Larry’s sounds (with three exceptions at the end of movement 3) that have been reconxtextualized and recombined to illustrate the composer’s rich and varied sound world. Contemplating Larry was commissioned by Larry Austin and is (of course) dedicated to him with admiration and gratitude.

Contemplating Larry

The Rush of the Brook Stills the Mind for multi-percussion and live, interactive electroacoustics takes its inspiration from a poem with the same title by Wally Swist. The percussionist’s virtuosic foray through Swist’s evocative work pairs acoustic and electroacoustic forces into a single entity. The Rush of the Brook Stills the Mind was commissioned by percussionist Scott Deal and is dedicated to him.

The trail flashes
	with sluices of snow melt.
		Silver-green undersides

of hemlock lift in the wind.
	A warbler’s electric call
		climbs all the way

up the mountain slope.
	That hidden waterfall 
		we promised to see

this spring unrolls bolt after bolt
	of runoff that splashes
		veils of watery lace

over stones. The canopy
	creaks with pine siskins.
		Mist rises above snow.

The aloneness almost too much
	for one man. The surge
		of the brook crashes

around boulders; a sink hole
	swirls and dips. Ripples
		cascade in a basin

under deadfall to plunge
	into a froth of torrent.	
		A nuthatch debugs

a fallen branch that rocks
	in the current; and a mayfly
		is blown above the spray.

--Wally Swist from Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love, published by Southern Illinois University Press (2012). Reproduced with permission of the author. All rights reserved.

The Rush of the Brook Stills the Mind

La fête de la huitièmme decennie weaves a fantasy about celebrations and the aftermath. It celebrates François Bayle’s 80th birthday and premiered October 27 2012 in Brussels, Belgium on a concert honoring him.

La fête de la huitièmme decennie

Written for and performed by Bent Frequency at the Charlotte New Music Festival, June 2016. Jan Baker, alto saxophone; Stuart Gerber, percussion.

The Common Thread
i. spathiphyllum
ii. aloe vera
iii. solanum lycopersinum
iv. chlorophytum cosmosum
v. crassula ovata

This piece is about my house plants. I love them very much.
"chlorophytum cosmosum" is based on the song "One Day" by Roy MacNeil. 

The Common Thread (2016)

After Long Drought (2016) for vibraphone and live, interactive electroacoustics takes its inspiration from a poem with the same title by Wally Swist:

The sky rips open
after days of grinding heat, 
waves of meadow grass

shift in the blowing rain, 
and floating on the breadth 
of its extended wings,

as bright as a vision,
the great blue heron 
strokes through the storm.

The percussionist’s virtuosic foray through Swist’s evocative work conjures images of an aggressive summer squall, with its torrential driving rain and gusting wind reflecting life’s unpredictability and tumult. As the piece progresses, the storm fades into the background as our focus is directed to a peaceful calm discovered amidst the storm – a heron majestically gliding through the gale. After Long Drought was commissioned by Scott Deal. After Long appears with the author’s permission and is published in Winding Paths Worn through Grass (Chicago, IL: Virtual Artists Collective, 2012).

AfterLongDrought

Performed in a reading session by the University of North Texas Symphonic Orchestra, Jack Buddenhagen

In Lincoln, Nebraska, there is the International Quilt Study Center & Museum. Walking through the museum, I can’t help but feel a sense of duality: the richly decorated patterns, but the somewhat nostalgic quality that can come with the medium. I’m particularly drawn to flowers and brocade fabrics; fields of intricately designed flowers line the wall and fill your vision. This piece is full of crossing and repeated patterns laid across each other, at times interacting, and sometimes more exposed. At times, the sounds are encompassing and warm, wrapping the listener in a blanket of sound, others are sparse and open. Overlapping notes and phrases create subtle cadences and nearly tonal reminisces. Underneath all of this harmonic wrapping is a unifying pulse connecting the material, and keeping the threads together.

Image: 
"Rose Wreath" - from 1870-1890, Marie Landis
From the International Quilt Museum, University of Nebraska - Lincoln. 

https://www.internationalquiltmuseum.org/quilt/20080400116?fbclid=IwAR2qxEPNpiTlVixJWMaLWjwqdKr6Ly-MTwwxRpS_QdTnhqM5uWXQzP0W7hY

Arbitrary/Peremptory

JASmithComposer

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