Look under your feet


The lesson which life constantly repeats is to ‘look under your feet.’
You are always nearer to the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.
The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive.
The great opportunity is where you are.
Do not despise your own place and hour.
Every place is under the stars.
Every place is the center of the world.

— John Burroughs, Studies in Nature and Literature

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Arrangements and orchestrations
Greg Smith’s experience as a composer and chamber musician means that he is comfortable scoring in a variety of styles and instrumental forces: – chamber (e.g., piano, cello and piano, string quartet) – choral – orchestra – wind orchestra Greg can arrange in a variety of styles, from classical to jazz. Contact Greg Smith ARRANGMENTS, […]
The nature of music
“A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.” – W. H. Auden, English Poet Auden, Wystan Hugh ‎(1988) The Complete Words of Auden, Princeton University Press, vol. 3, p. 251.
A carriage of flowers for Tchaikovsky
Tchaikovsky’s favourite flower was lilies of the valley.  The local musical society at Tiflis was extremely enthusiastic to have the presence of Tchaikovsky at a gala concert of his works at the Opera House: Ippolitov-Ivanov had thought of everything, even finding out by devious means what his favourite flower was.  This flower did not grow […]
Start from scratch every time
Benjamin Appl on working with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau: When people ask me about what I learned from Fischer-Dieskau, that’s what I always come back to: of course I could say a hundred things about technique and his reputation, but what I found most inspiring was how he created everything afresh. Whenever he was teaching he’d prepare […]
Smooth Sailing
Title: Smooth Sailing Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano duet Level: Piano 1 – 1.1 (five finger position) Product medium: PDF score (audio of accompaniment track only)
The significance of the individual
  “You are an extremely valuable, worthwhile, significant person even though your present circumstances may have you feeling otherwise.” – James Newmann, American mathematician
The musician’s quest
The violinist Ivan Galamian describes the musician’s quest for a goal greater than mere technical accomplishment: A complete technique .. implies the ability to do justice, with unfailing reliability and control, to each and every demand of the most refined musical imagination.  It enables the performer, when he has formed an ideal concept of how […]
Air II
Title: Air II Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Duet Level: Piano I – level 1 (five finger positions, left and right hands) Product medium: PDF score & MP3 accompaniment track (Audio sample of accompaniment track only)
Arthur Schnabel
“Artur Schnabel is a pianist unlike any other. One is conscious in listening to him of a powerful and original mind revealing unsuspected meanings and complications in music as familiar as Brahm’s Intermezzi and Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata. His tone is as a rule dry in anything above a piano, but a sudden touch of pedal […]
The life of a pianist
My life involves endless hours of repetitive and frustrating practising, lonely hotel rooms, dodgy pianos, aggressively bitchy reviews, isolation, confusing airline reward programmes, physiotherapy, stretches of nervous boredom … punctuated by short moments of extreme pressure …perhaps most crushingly, the realisation that I will never, ever give the perfect recital. It can only ever, with […]