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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Mattheson on the courante
“The passion or affection which should be performed in a courante is sweet hopefullness.” – Johann Mattheson. Siblin, Eric (2009) The Cello Suites. Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, p. 103.
Music is for me to play
“You claim that I write monstrosities which only the composer can play. What if they were meant only for the composer?” Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji to his friend Peter Warlock. Cited at: Wikipedia
Paderewski, the dandy
Overheard in a New York street car:— Average Young Man (to neighbour): “Everything they say about Paderewski is true. He’s a perfect genius. Why, he played fourteen pieces and did not once look at the programme. Yet he played straight ahead and never once forgot what piece was to come next. I tell you the […]
Tchaikovsky and mushroom collecting
Like so many Russians, he was a madly keen collector of mushrooms and could indulge his passion freely at Klin; the woods and fields around his house were filled with them.  However, as anyone will know who has taken to the sport, there are mushroom collectors and mushroom collectors; some have the eye for it, […]
Malcolm Sargent on Vaughan Williams’ Sixth Symphony
Conductor Malcolm Sargent on Vaughan Williams’ Sixth Symphony: A frightening symphony. For a symphony to be frightening is perhaps a good thing. Here we have the complete testament of a man who, in his seventies, looks back on the human sufferings of his time. I never conduct the Sixth without feeling that I am walking […]
Music with no boundaries
Music can imply the infinite if enough things depart from the norm far enough. Strange “abnormal” events can lead to the feeling that anything can happen, and you have a music with no boundaries. – Morton Feldman, American composer Cited in Tom Johnson, Remembrance, September 1987. Accessed 13 May 2013.
Lullaby for Ben
Title: Lullaby for Ben Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: Piano Product medium: PDF score
The ghost of Paganini
The Belgian violinist Eugène Yasÿe frightened Busoni by playing the Bach Chaconne and Paganini Caprices on a kit violin in the darkened passages of a hotel.  ”It was like the ghost of Paganini, purposely exaggerating all the worst mannerisms of the typical virtuoso, and Busoni could never forget the sight of Ysaÿe’s vast bulk and […]
Quantity of practice
In the matter of practice, I never urge a student to work so many hours a day. One may be enough. The musician is like a painter, who frequently spends his time in looking at the work he has done, and in thinking what he will make of it, without so much as touching the […]
Early music discovered on carving
A craftsman replicating large medallions has discovered medieval Scottish notation of instrumental music.  The notation is sequences of 0s, Is and IIs. Barnaby Brown, a specialist in early Scottish music, notated that, “This discovery is potentially of great significance to our understanding of medieval and Renaissance instrumental music – the normally ‘unwritten’ practice of the elite court […]