Ari Smith
My Personal Website
Please contact me if you wish to perform a piece or get access to a score.
(Score Excerpt from Contour Without Cut)
Selected Completed Works (in Reverse Chronological Order)
The Inter-States of Brandenburg and Minnesconsin, an extended coda to J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg no. 1 Adagio, for (at minimum) 3 Oboes, 2 Violins, Viola, and Continuo, 2026,
ca. 8’, or twice that with repeats for continuo embellishments,
after Jonathan Kramer’s The Time of Music, and my current living situation
Grain by Grain (For Seare Farhat and Asher Wulfman) for Tenor and Violinist - 2025
co-written with Carson Borbely
Sarabande for Solo Keyboardist - 2025, 8’ link
Power Tools IV: (de la Bibliotheque) au Bilboquet for Hornist and Contrabassist in 13-limit Extended Just Intonation - 2024, 9’
written for Declan Mulkerin
Letter from Home for any Solo Instrumentalist with a 3-octave range (e.g. violin, clarinet, guitar, horn) - 2024, 5.5’
Caring Promiscuously and Experimentally (CPE) for Violist and Harpsichord/Clavichord-Player (after C.P.E. Bach’s Empfindungen and the Care Collective’s Care Manifesto) - 2024, 9’
Power Tools III: To My Pressure Pump (After Lorine Niedecker) for Organist - 2024, 10’
(Fantasia on) Nickel Under the Foot (from Marc Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock) for Percussionist and Soprano Saxophonist - 2023, 2’
intended as an encore piece alongside Coffee Grinder for T-Bone Slim
Tar-Tenney Tones for Solo Contrabassist (realization of James Tenney’s For Percussion Perhaps, or… (Night)) - 2022, 10’ link
Power Tools II: Coffee Grinder for T-bone Slim for Percussionist and Alto Saxophonist - 2022, 7.5’ link
commissioned by Greg Riss and Joe Connor
Sad-ish Pavane for Hamish Fulton / Slowwalk for Some Distracted Times for Violinist and Cellist (after Hamish Fulton and Thomas Tomkins), arrangement and expansion of ‘Of Species in Gradus…’ - 2022, 9’
written for Sahada Buckley and Trace Johnson
To Attend to (Two Attend Two) for Violinist and Cellist (after the Care Collective and Susan Leigh Star) - 2022, 10’
commissioned by Sahada Buckley and Trace Johnson
Simple Machines are Also Power Tools: The Wedge as Boundary Maker and Boundary Object (After Susan Leigh Star) for String Quartet - 2022, 18’
If on a Winter’s Night a Thrill… (After Italo Calvino) for 2-Channel Fixed Media - 2021, 6’42” link
Contour Without Cut (Barad in Penthesilea) (after Karen Barad, Italo Calvino, Sam Gilliam, Bruno Latour, George Lewis, and Roscoe Mitchell) for Celesta-Player - 2021, 10’
Death and Transliteration for Mezzo-Soprano and Cellist (text by the composer) - 2021, 2’
Post-Hylomorph: Electroacoustic Study on Sculpture (After Masahiko Kimura, Jan Holschuh, Haegue Yang, and Kenneth Price) for 2-Channel Fixed Media - 2020, 6.5’ link
Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Same River Twice (After Heraclitus, D.T. Suzuki, and Wallace Stevens) for String Quartet and Jazz Trio - 2020, 10’
Se non vero, trovato (after Giordano Bruno, Frances Yates, Morton Feldman, Andy Goldsworthy, and Stefania Heim) for Solo Pianist - 2020, 14’
Form Against Ornament Rends the Firmament, While the Melody-Mediator Made Mends with Its Filament (Variations on Lorem Ipsum) for Four-Octave Carillon (or Celesta, or Four-Octave Vibraphone) - 2019, 7’
Sonnet for the Woodlands for Pianist and Spoken Word (either live, or pre-recorded and emanating from inside the piano) (text by the composer) - 2019, 4’
Gemini Contrived (For Seare Farhat) for Solo Percussionist (Prepared Vibraphone, 29” Timpano, and Riveted Ride Cymbal) - 2019, variable duration
A Hopeless Semantic for Solo Contrabassist - 2019, 6’
Of Species in Gradus, in Steps of my Gait for Solo Guitarist (after John Dowland and Hamish Fulton) - 2019, 5’
Skylines and (B-2) Spirits for Solo Harpsichordist - 2018, 5’ link
Works in Progress
Fragments of a Lover’s Discourse: Cento-Madrigali, Book of Madrigals for SATTB, or SATB plus Instrumentalist (texts by Roland Barthes*, Alain de Lille, Marianne Moore, Giordano Bruno, Octavio Paz*, St. John of the Cross, Jaden Smith) - currently ~35’ long
* texts used without permission
Other
Seare Farhat’s composition Body Counterpoint (after Paul Valery) for Mezzo-Soprano and Alto Flute (or Violin) (2019) sets a text of the same name that I wrote