Compositions for sale:

*Collusions
for Solo Piano (Co-composed with William Bolcom)
*Fantasy Pieces
for Violin and Piano
*The Farewell... (Les Adieux)
for Horn, String Quartet and Piano
*Masquerades
for Solo Organ
*Second Piano Trio (The Sacred Heart of Sound)
for Piano Trio
*Twelve Etudes
for Solo Piano

Compositions on rental by Theodore Presser:

*GAS! (Great American Symphony)
3343 Sax 4421 Timp Perc Banjo Pno Str
*Violin Concerto
2*222 1Sx(A&T) 2200 Timp 2Perc Solo Vln Str
*Concerto for Left Hand and Orchestra
2Picc2EH2BsCl2Cbn 4331 Timp 3Perc Hp Piano Solo Str
*Concerto for Violin, Piano and String Orchestra

Visit Curtis's new website

BIOGRAPHY

An internationally recognized composer, Curtis Otto Bismark Curtis-Smith was born in 1941 in Walla Walla, Washington. Currently on the faculty of Western Michigan University, 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, the Harvard University Fromm Foundation, and a WMU distinguished Faculty Scholar Award, the university's highest academic honor.

In 2001, his Twelve Etudes for Piano (Piedmont Music) were selected for the repertoire 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 Järvi and Dennis Russell Davies, who have performed his music throughout the United States and in Germany and Japan.

Mr. Curtis-Smith studied at Whitman College with John Ringgold and David Burge; Northwestern University with Alan Stout and Guy Mombaerts; the University of Illinois with Kenneth Gaburo; and at Tanglewood with Bruno Maderna. 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.

As a pianist, Curtis Curtis-Smith has appeared as a solo recitalist at the National Gallery and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. Orchestral appearances include performances with the Indianapolis Symphony, the Seattle Symphony, and the Kalamazoo Symphony. In 1986 he premiered the last three etudes of William Bolcom's Pulitzer Prize-winning Twelve New Etudes.