Craig Smith (conductor)

Craig Smith (31 January 1947 — 14 November 2007) was an American conductor who is considered a seminal figure in Boston's Baroque music revival of the 1970s and 1980s. In 1970 he founded Emmanuel Music, an internationally recognized music organization that is particularly known for performances of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Biography

Born in Lewiston, Idaho, Smith began studying the piano at the age of four. His mother was a teacher and his father a carpenter. Although neither of his parents were working musicians, they constantly encouraged their children's love of music. For Craig that meant flute lessons in addition to the piano. With his parents and his brother Kent he traveled frequently throughout the Northwest to concerts as he was growing up. In high school, Smith was active in numerous musical ensembles including band and various choirs.

In 1965 Smith entered Washington State University, where he was first exposed to opera production. After attending a 1967 summer program organized by the New England Conservatory (NEC), Smith moved to Boston, and was accepted for matriculation at the NEC. He was mentored there in chamber music studies by the pianist Russell Sherman and violinist Rudolf Kolisch.

In 1968, still a 21 year old student, Smith was hired as choir director at Emmanuel Church. Two years later he founded Emmanuel Music at the church, a Boston-based collective of singers and instrumentalists created to perform the cycle of over 200 sacred cantatas of J.S. Bach in the liturgical setting for which they were intended. The group later expanded into performing other literature, including operas, from a variety of musical periods. Baroque music, however, remains to this day the group's major emphasis. The organization is the resident ensemble of Boston's Emmanuel Church and Smith was its music director until the time of his death.

During his years with Emmanuel Music, Smith conducted hundreds of concerts of Bach's works, as well as the United States premieres of several operas by Handel and the world premieres of works by composer John Harbison. During the 1980s, Smith collaborated frequently with stage director Peter Sellars, including stagings of Mozart's da Ponte trilogy, Handel's Giulio Cesare, several Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, and works by Bach, Weill, and Gershwin.

In 1988 Smith was invited to assume duties as principle guest conductor at La Monnaie, a famed theater and concert hall established during the Baroque in Brussels, Belgium. The position quickly became full-time, and he remained there for three years. Soon after arriving he conducted the premiere of choreographer Mark Morris's adaptation of Handel's L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, an influential dance work which continues to be staged internationally. Smith also appeared as guest conductor at opera houses in Barcelona, Vienna, and London, among other cities, while in the United States he conducted at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Boston Lyric Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, the Handel and Haydn Society and elsewhere. He also served on the faculties of the Juilliard School, MIT, the New England Conservatory, Boston University, Pepperdine University, and the Tanglewood Music Center.

Smith died in Boston at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in 2007 of heart failure as a resulting from diabetes-related kidney failure.

References

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