“Most performers pretty much ignore the audience – they play and go off … Don’t get me wrong. I worship these guys! But what will make someone who hardly knows about classical music listen to to Grigory Sokolov for two hours straight, and in total silence? you have to work your way up to that […]

Title: Wexford Carol Text: 12th century Irish Composer: 12th century Irish, arr. Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano     Related products:     – Wexford Carol – SATB and organ (PDF score) Product medium: PDF score and parts Sample:

Robert de Fragny recalled a conversation with Ravel about his compositional process: The G major Concerto took two years of work, you know.  The opening theme came to me on a train between Oxford and London. But the initial idea is nothing.  The work of chiseling then begun.  We’ve gone past the days when the […]

“I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.” — Thomas Edison, American inventor A. R. Calhoun How to Get On in the World; or, a Ladder to Pratical Success, New York, 1895, p.137.  Digitally archived at: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/20608/pg20608.html, accessed 18 September 2021. 

With shifts in the commercial music industry away from smooth jazz, musicians are finding new niches for smooth jazz such as cruises. Twenty years ago, of course, smooth jazz wasn’t a code to be cracked so much as a wave to be caught. Like most species of pop, it felt ubiquitous and maybe a little […]

“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.” – Leonard Bernstein

Title: I’ll Softly Sigh Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score SAMPLE:

My purpose is to create music not for snobs, but for all people, music which is beautiful and healing.  To attempt what old Chinese painters called "spirit resonance" in melody and sound. – Alan Hovhaness. Cited at The Alan Hovhaness Website: http://www.hovhaness.com/Hovhaness.html

“When you’re young, you can be taken with the impulse of the moment and the beauty of a phrase, but the older you get, the more you see that the phrase is only beautiful because of the context within which it works.  The melody is only the outward manifestation of something quite deep inside and […]

Title: Lord, you are good and forgiving (Setting II) Text: Psalm 85 (86): 5-6, 9-10, 15-16 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample: