Bill Smith (jazz musician)

William Overton "Bill" Smith (born 22 September 1926 in Sacramento ) is an American jazz clarinetist and composer (especially Cool Jazz, Third Stream ).

Smith grew up in Oakland and got ten years old clarinet (modeled by Benny Goodman), played (founded on the model of Stan Kenton ) as a teenager from the age of thirteen in a dance band and played in high school in a classic Youth Orchestra ( Oakland Symphony ). He studied at the Juilliard School Composition ( while he was playing at the same time in jazz clubs of the 52nd Street Jazz ) and then on the Mills College in Oakland (with Darius Milhaud ) with a Master 's degree in music in 1951. At Mills College Dave Brubeck was his classmate, with which it formed one octet and still played as a student from 1947 to 1951 and made ​​recordings. He then taught at the University of Southern California. After graduating from Mills College, he won the Prix de Paris, which allowed him a two-year stay at the Paris Conservatory. Winning the Prix de Rome in 1957 gave him a one-year stay in Rome, where he developed experimental techniques for playing the clarinet (Smith multiphonics ). In 1957 he took in Los Angeles with Shelly Manne (1957 /58) and Red Norvo. With man, he recorded his composition Concerto for Clarinet and Combo with Red Norvo and his composition Divertimento. He also starred in the period 1959 to 1961 several times with the Dave Brubeck Quartet, where he stepped in for Paul Desmond. Smith also composed for Brubeck. In 1947 he took with Brubeck Octet his composition Schizophrenic Scherzo on, one of the earliest Third Stream compositions.

He won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1960, after which he spent in Rome in 1960 and 1966. He founded along with John Eaton, the American Jazz Ensemble, with whom he toured Europe and the U.S. and took pictures. He also played on the LP Americans in Europe, Volume 1 ( Impulse!, Organized by Joachim Ernst Berendt ) from 1963 with a Bill Smith Quintet, in which Herb Geller, Jimmy Gourley ( g), Joe Harris ( dr) and Bob Carter ( b ) played. He played in Europe at that time bop -oriented music. His collaboration with Brubeck continued into the 1960s. With the Orchestra USA, he took his composition Concerto for jazz soloist and Orchestra in the 1960s.

From 1966 he headed the Contemporary Music Group at the University of Washington in Seattle. He led the group in part with trombonist Stuart Dempster until his partial retirement in the 1990s.

In 1981 he took up with Enrico Pieranunzi and in the first half of the 1980s, he worked again with Dave Brubeck.

He also composed classical music ( jazz elements ) under the name of William O. Smith.

Besides Milhaud, Roger Sessions among his teachers.

Smith also taught at the University of Berkeley. In 1964 he received the Artist resist deserving recognition award from the Downbeat Critics Polls.

Swell

• The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, 1996