Andrew Smith, P.h.D.
Assistant Professor of Instruction, Music
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Bio
An educator, composer, electronic musician, and vocalist from Atlanta, GA, J. Andrew Smith (b. 1992) is zealous about the intersections between acousmatic sound, live performers, and improvisation. His works often delve into personal narratives and how they can inform and enrich abstract mediums. Musical characteristics such as timbre, gesture, space, and form are often dictated by a delicate interlacing of autobiography with poetry and fiction in J. Andrew’s music. He embraces the convergence of complex structures with elements of improvisation to give performers agency without losing coherence or cogency in his music. As a vocalist, he maintains a passion for visceral, guttural, strange, and electrifying sounds.
J. Andrew’s works have been performed at numerous SEAMUS conferences, the SPLICE Institute and Festival, Third Practice Electroacoustic Music Festival, New Music on the Point, Electric LaTex, PASIC, and the Southeastern Composers' Symposium. He has participated in readings with Michael Lewanski, the Spektral Quartet, the Semiosis Quartet, and the Toledo Symphony Orchestra. In 2022, he was selected as one of the four finalists in the ASCAP/SEAMUS Student Commission Competition for his piece Arbitrary/Peremptory for voice and interactive electronics.
His dissertation Utterances; Approaching a New Acousmatic Praxis examines the philosophical roots of acousmatic music and attempts to modernize Pierre Schaeffer’s conceptions of sound and emphasize the significance of the ways that sound is used by composers as the crux of a modern acousmatic praxis.
A graduate of the University of North Texas’s PhD program in Music Composition. J. Andrew’s teachers have included Jon Nelson, Joseph Klein, Panayiotis Kokoras, Andrew May, Elainie Lillios, Mikel Kuehn, Christopher Dietz, Fred Cohen, and Matthew McCabe. Additionally, he has worked with artists and performers such as Jordan Walsh, Colin Stokes, Diana Rojas, Sean Lopez, Lisa Kaplan, Matthew Duvall, and Conner Simmons.
Currently Assistant Professor of Practice in Music Technology at the University of Texas San Antonio, J. Andrew has taught electronic music and composition classes at Bowling Green State University, Owens Community College, and the University of North Texas.
