Andrew Smith

about

There are multiple artists with the name Andrew Smith. 1. Andrew Smith (b. 1970) is a British-Norwegian composer with a growing international reputation for choral and vocal music that links tradition with a contemporary idiom. In the words of Alexandra Coghlan, “…Smith’s compositions incorporate medieval textures and chant, which are reflected and inflected through [his] own contemporary idiom, blurring the modal clarity of plainchant with vivid cluster-chords and dissenting moments of chromatic or dissonant color. The effect is at once familiar and unsettling in its strangeness – a distorted and original viewpoint on the past.» Andrew read music and English at the University of Oslo. His composing, a hobby since the age of eight, began in earnest in the late 1990s when he wrote a piece for the newly-formed Trio Mediaeval (Norway). The subsequent recording of this and other music for the Trio brought Andrew to the attention of the American audience and led the way to collaborations with American groups such as New York Polyphony (two of whose discs, to which Andrew contributed pieces, were nominated for Grammy awards) and The Girl Choristers of Washington National Cathedral, as well as many performances by American ensembles. In 2015 Andrew was commissioned to write a piece for the leading English early music ensemble Gothic Voices; of his setting of “Stond wel, Moder, under rode”, Andrew Mellor writes in Gramophone: “It’s fascinating how Smith picks up on the harmonic DN

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