Charles Joseph Smith--Musician and Composer

This website focuses on my piano, composition, and accompanying endeavors.

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UPDATE: The COVID-19 pandemic is winding down, and as a result, I am starting to do in-person performances again. In 2023, I made guest keyboard appearances at the Porkchop Jam sessions at Porkchop Restaurant (in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago), directed by drummer and music producer, Tommy Carroll. 

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I am getting more and more gigs down in 2024. Most recently, I was involved in a tape release of brand new computer music compositions in "The Electroacoustics Come Out" Tape Release at Cary's Lounge, on Saturday, May 18th. I am also due for a performance at St. Ignatius College Prep from 7pm to 10pm on Wednesday, May 29th.  

I am also trying to get my avant-garde opera project work-in-progress, "War of the Martian Ghosts", camera-ready right now. I just need to add the final orchestrations. 

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RECALL ON A PAST RECITAL AT KROC CENTER (FEBRUARY 4, 2023):

The Saturday, February 4th performance of me in an African-American Concert at the Kroc Center was quite a success. I was lucky enough to perform transcriptions of Black Music from the Motown, jazz, gospel and pop genres, as well as my own composition called "Impromptu-Rondo in C Minor", which is a bit of my big "magnum opus" compositions. I was thinking of creating a multi-movement sonata out of that rondo. 

MORE UPCOMING APPEARANCES  TBA.

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In addition to my Google site, I also appear on at least several other websites, as listed below...... 

https://www.facebook.com/charlesjosephsmith '

https://www.facebook.com/musicandalotmore/ 

https://www.facebook.com/celebrationofjoyinc/ 

https://www.instagram.com/charlessmith702210/ 

https://twitter.com/lamarjlinden 

https://www.youtube.com/lindenly22

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9ngvStTc4Hrq1WEVokzfsg 

BIOGRAPHY

CHARLES JOSEPH SMITH started piano lessons at 8 and composing music at 10. He and his family have lived in the Beverly area of Chicago since March 1974. His piano teachers included Sofia Zukerman, James Williams, Pawel Checinski, Gustavo Romero, and William Heiles. His composition/theory teachers included Phyllis Hill, Don Malone, Roberto Lombardo, and Charlotte Lehnhoff.

       He attended Beacon Therapeutic School, for his elementary and high school education, from 1975 to 1990.

     During his time in Beacon, he competed in the Chicago Area Music Teachers Association (CAMTA) competition in 1983  and won first place in the Junior Division, earning him a spot in the winner's recital at the Sherwood School of Music. He competed in the 1987 Young Keyboard Artists Association (YKAA) piano competition in Ann Arbor, Michigan as a Level 9 Junior Artist and made the semi-finals, and earned a citation for making it far; moreover, he was appointed to be in the YKAA piano master class with master teacher Ernesto Lejano, where he performed the Beethoven's Piano Sonata in D minor, op. 31, no. 2 (first movement). Charles also won first place in the senior division of the Society of American Musicians piano competition in 1988, and he competed in a scholarship recital from the Ernestine Bruton foundation. Between 1985 and 1989, he attended four summer music camps---first at Illinois State University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Ilinois Summer Youth Music), the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and then Chapman College in California.  (The last two summer camps were sponsored by the YKAA.)  

      In 1986, he debuted as a concert soloist with the South Side Family Chamber Orchestra (which is now the Chicago Community Orchestra), where he performed the 20th Piano Concerto of Mozart under conductor Delano O'Banion at the Bethel AME Church in Chicago. Charles also performed this concerto, Grieg's A Minor Concerto, or Beethoven's 3rd Concerto under the same local orchestra t Olive-Harvey College, Shiloh Church, the Museum of Science and Industry and, also an outdoor concert at Daley Plaza under a few other conductors, including Terrance Gray, appearing as a guest soloist 7 times. 

     Also during this time, he competed in the NAACP ACT-SO (African Cultural, Technological, and Scientific Olympics) competitions in 1988 and 1989. In 1988, he won the local competitions in Music Instrumental-Classical and Music Composition, performing Chopin's "Polonaise in Ab Major" and performing his own composition, Scherzo in F minor.  He then competed in the national competition and got 2nd place overall in Music Instrumental-Classical in Washington D.C.  In 1989, he won the local competition again and competed in the nationals in Los Angeles, California. In 1990, he won first place as a pianist in the Nathaniel Dett Club local Chicago competition and represented himself in the national finals in Columbus, Ohio. 

     Charles also debuted as a piano contestant in still another competition, the 11th  Chicago Park District Talent Search, in 1990. He made the cut in the preliminaries of that Talent Search at Tuley Park, performed once again in the semifinals at Daley Bicentennial Plaza, and made the cut once again to the finals at the Petrillo Music Shell. 

    After completing studies at Beacon Therapeutic School, he started his composing and playing piano seriously at the Chicago Musical College of Roosevelt University in 1990, where he also got a $4,000 annual partial scholarship from the Ramsey Lewis Foundation during his undergraduate sojourn there.  At that point, he took composition with Robert Lombardo and a composition seminar class with Patricia Morehead, and performed his "Carmen Fantasy" for piano during a student composition recital in 1992, while during his piano major studies, he studied with renowned Polish pianist, Pawel Checinski.  In 1993, when he was a junior, his major off-campus accomplishment was going to another summer piano camp in Oberlin, OH, where he debut his own B minor nocturne in the style of Chopin in one of the camp's group recitals.  Just near his senior year at Roosevelt University, he continued composing a lot more compositions. His tally right now was over 700 compositions, most of them for the piano alone, and started getting into the world of electro-acoustic composition in 1994, where he had composed MIDI compositions as well, which he uses for tape music. His music ranges from commercial all the way to classical and even experimental compositions. Before he finished Roosevelt, he got a stint as an assistant music director for the English-language production of Bizet’s Carmen by the Roosevelt University Opera Theater in 1994, partially because he loved this opera more than any other opera in the general repertory. Charles earned a B.M. in Piano cum laude from the Chicago Musical College, and was recognized by the Franklin Honor Society. 

       He continued his piano studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where he earned an M.M. in Piano in 1995, and a D.M.A. in Piano Performance and Literature in 2002.  During this time, he competed in the  1995 National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM) local piano competition and represented NANM in the national finals in Newark, New Jersey, where he got third place.  In August 1996, he was appointed to perform in a solo recital in Chicago's Olive Harvey College.  Meanwhile, his accomplishments at the UIUC campus include being selected to perform at the Cotton Club showcase at the Foellinger Auditorium in 1996, and volunteered to be in the pit orchestra as a keyboardist for Penny Dreadful Player’s production of the Sondheim musical, “Into The Woods” around 1997, and was commissioned pro bono to compose incidental play music for Peter Bulow’s student play, “The Pilgrim”, in 1998, and also earning an inside minor in Music Theory in 2000.

       His doctoral thesis during his studies at the University of Illinois, called “Performance Suggestions for Franz Liszt's Operatic Arrangements on Don Juan (Don Giovanni), La Sonnambula, Robert le Diable, and Norma”, has focused on several operatic piano transcriptions of Franz Liszt through two successful lecture-recitals, and shortly afterward, he became a lifetime member of the American Liszt Society.

       In addition to his compositional and educational accomplishments, Charles gained some international music experience abroad, performing in recitals, music workshops, and in other presentations in France, Germany, Italy and Hungary, with the most recent one being a full solo piano recital in Ganges, France.  He attended the French Piano Institute in Paris in July 2000 and won an Honorable Mention in their final recital and competition. He went to Italy in 2001 to compete in the IBLA Grand Prize International Competition in Sicily, where he won an Honorable Mention for Musicianship. In the same year, he also performed in a master class under famous Hungarian pianist Csaba Király at the International Piano Master Class in Budapest.

       In addition to his compositional and educational accomplishments, Charles gained some international music experience abroad, performing in recitals, music workshops, and in other presentations in France, Germany, Italy and Hungary, with the most recent one being a full solo piano recital in Ganges, France.  He attended the French Piano Institute in Paris in July 2000 and won an Honorable Mention in their final recital and competition. He went to Italy in 2001 to compete in the IBLA Grand Prize International Competition in Sicily, where he won an Honorable Mention for Musicianship. In the same year, he also performed in a master class under famous Hungarian pianist Csaba Király at the International Piano Master Class in Budapest.

       Charles also made these new musical accomplishments:  

·         In October 2005, he attended his first electro-acoustic composition conference, Electronic Music Midwest, at the Kansas City Kansas Community College, (in Kansas City, KS) , where his original tape composition, "Synth vs. Synth", was featured. In February, 2006, Charles participated in the Black History Celebration concert sponsored by the Chicago Music Association, performing the complete Sonata no. 1 by living African-American composer George Walker, and also performed his operatic piano transcription "Non più andrai" from Act II of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro in honor of Mozart's 250th birthday.

·         Charles has also gained additional international experience in France, having done his first international lecture in 2006 in Mainz, Germany about the death of the classical radio station, WNIB-FM, and performing two piano recitals in Frontingan and Ganges. He also went to Italy in 2008, to perform a few master classes and two recitals at the Amalfi Coast Music Festival at Vietri Sul Mare.

·         Charles performed in an all-Liszt alumni recital in 2011 at the University of Illinois in honor of the bicentennial of Franz Liszt’s birth.

·         He also performed at the National Association for Negro Musicians’ “Black Fantasy” Concert, along with Metropolitan Opera tenor, Mark Rucker at the South Shore Cultural Center on August 14, 2014.

          In 2015, Charles was appointed to be the accompanist in Andrew Schultze's Summer Opera Workshop at the Fine Arts Building.

·         Charles also performed as an accompanist in two duo vocal concerts at the Fine Arts Building featuring soprano Jo Chiko and baritone Keanon Kyles on Saturday, April 16 and Sunday, April 17 of 2016. In addition to this, he performed with Keanon Kyles in two separate Christmas concerts in Chicago on December 18 and December 19 of 2016. 

·         Every year from 2007 to 2016, Dr. Smith performed as rehearsal accompanist and keyboardist at Hartzell Memorial United Methodist Church in two major performances with the Sanctuary Choir under conductor Delano O’Banion, the “Seven Last Words of Christ” by Theodore Dubois, and “The Messiah” by George Frederic Handel.

·         He also has been a trustee as well as an accompanist for Andrew Schultze’s Chicago Syntagma Musicum (or “Musical Discourse”) from 2010 to 2014, working with scores of vocal students in at least 10 major engagements in the Fine Arts Building in Chicago and at the St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Evanston, IL. These engagements included workshops and recitals mainly focusing on early music compositions, opera, or art song singing.

·         Charles performed his own transcription of Schubert’s “Fantasy in F Minor for Two Pianos” at the Schubertiade (or “Schubert Party”) at Pianoforte Chicago on January 2017, and for the first time, the performance was simulcast on WFMT Radio. 

            The pictures you see down below represent something like my EPK (Electronic Press Kit) for my site - samples of music programs from recitals and concerts I was in, and samples of my music compositions (originals and/or arrangements), and other documentation.