Collaborative piano

PERFORMANCE BIOGRAPHY
GREG SMITH
Certifications and degrees:
– 1996: Associate of Music, Australia (A. mus. A.) in piano performance
– 1998: Licentiate of Music, Australia (L. mus. A.) in piano performance
– 2001: Bachelor of Music, with honours, class I (University Medal).  University of Newcastle.  Double major in piano and composition.
– 2003: Master of Creative Arts, University of Music.  Performance practice issues in Russian piano music.

Experience:

  • Performances as soliost and accompanist in Australia, Japan, Malaysia, and New Zealand.
  • Performed improvised and original scores for Australia’s Silent Film Festival.  Films include Nosferatu, The Lodger, The General, Tol’rable David, and shorts by Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keating.
  • Collaborative pianist with artists ranging from beginners through to post-graduate university students and professional performers.  Worked with most instruments and familiar with a large portion of the repertoire.  Particular interest in the late romantic repertoire (such as Rachmaninoff’s cello sonata, Arensky’s piano trio, and the Brahms sonatas).  Collaborated with artists of the Christchurch Camerata, Central Coast Philharmonic Choirs, Newcastle Festival Opera and insitutions such as the University of Newcastle, School and Community Music, and the McDonald College.
  • Repetiteur: for various companies, including Newcastle Festival Opera.  Recent works include La Boheme (Puccini), Candide (Bernstein), The Gondeliers (Sullivan), and Threepenny Opera (Weil).
  • Recorded accompaniment/background tracks for various artists ranging from musicians to theatre groups.

SERVICES
Solo & collaborative piano services:
– Solo performance
– Accompaniment & ensemble performance
– Repetiteur services
– Recording
– Tuition
– Piano method

Contact Greg Smith


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A practice regime
After a year’s sabbatical in 1953, the pianist Horowitz found a routine and rebuilt his technique: I realized I had to work out new daily schedules for myself – so much time for study, for rest, for reflection, for exercise … Soon my days had a new rhythm, a new serenity.  Every day I start […]
The potential of an artist
“How important is it to catch up with yourself? There are enormous forces lurking in each person, but many people die without having discovered this. Of course it was clear at first glance that Mozart was a genius. But we don’t know whether anybody suspected the great gifts of the young Wagner. Nobody could guarantee […]
Silence, slowness, clarity, reinvigorate
“No matter if you’re an artist, a desk jockey, or anything in between – give yourself permission to include regular (dare I say daily?) reinvigoration in your work ethic. Silence. Slowness. Clarity. The machine doesn’t work so well without them.” Kim Pensinger, from Living and Singing on Interest in the WTO Blog
Daydream
Title: Daydream Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Cello and piano Product medium: PDF score and part SAMPLE: 
Pavel Kolesnikov on historical instruments
For me, one of the ultimate goals of a performance is to make pieces come across as something new, something unexpected and fresh. As soon as you start working with historical instruments, you are jeopardising this aspect. It is very difficult to get away from that; some performers manage it magically, but I don’t see […]
I need a better razor
Haydn reached London in the opening days of 1791. He passed his first night at the house of Bland, the music publisher, at 45 High Holborn, which now, rebuilt, forms part of the First Avenue Hotel. Bland, it should have been mentioned before, had been sent over to Vienna by Salomon to coax Haydn into […]
The work of the individual
“The work of the individual still remains the spark that moves mankind forward.” – Igor Sikorsky, Russian aviator
Saint-Saëns defending virtuosity
It is virtuosity itself that I want to defend. It is the source of the picturesque in music, it gives the artist wings with whose help he escapes platitudes and the everyday. The conquered difficulty is in itself a beautiful thing. Theódphile Gautier, in Émaux et camées, considered this issue in immortal verses. . . […]
In the event of a lack of singers
In a letter to his friend Abbé Joseph Bullinger, Mozart jokes about the musical environment in Salsburg. One of his subjects is the search for an additional final principle singer. “I can hardly believe it!” he wrote “A female singer!? When we have so many already! – and all of them first rate…” (1). Mozart […]
The double life of an artist
People are mistaken thinking that the creative artist uses art to express what he feels at the very moment of experience. Joy and sorrow are feelings expressed retrospectively. Without any particular cause for rejoicing I can be immersed in a mood of happy creativity and, conversely, I can produce, when cheerful, a piece saturated in […]