School of Music - C. Curtis-Smith
C. Curtis-Smith (1968)
Composition, Piano
B.M. Northwestern
M.M. Northwestern
Tanglewood
An internationally recognized composer, he is the recipient of over 100 grants, awards, and commissions, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Koussevitzky Prize at Tanglewood, the Prix du Salabert, and grants from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council for the Arts, and most recently commissions from the Barlow Endowment and the Harvard University Fromm Foundation.
At age 38, he was the youngest faculty member ever awarded WMU's Distinguished Faculty Scholar Award, the university's highest academic honor.
In 2001, his Twelve Etudes for Piano were selected for the repetoire list for the Eleventh Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. After a performance of the etudes in Tully Hall, New York Times reviewer Bernard Holland wrote: "Mr. Curtis-Smith takes up where Debussy's lonely, bleakly beautiful last music ends. Yet these pieces have a voice of their own. One hears ideas at work and a momentum that carries thoughts coherently and convincingly from first note to last." A review in Fanfare Magazine said, "These etudes are brilliant and delightful."
Notable figures who have championed Curtis-Smith's work are pianist Leon Fleisher and conductors Neeme Jarvi and Dennis Russell Davies, who have performed his music throughout the United States and in Germany and Japan.
In 1972, he "invented" the technique of bowing the piano, using flexible bows made of monofilament nylon line. This technique, exemplified in works such as Rhapsodies, has been used by other composers, including George Crumb. His music is published by Theodore Presser, Marks Music, and Editions Salabert (Paris).
Email: c.curtis-smith@wmich.edu